


A Hundred Bad Days (Made a Hundred Good Stories)

by pearlcaddy



Series: 100 Bad Days [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter is My Love Language so It's Jukebox's Too, Drinking, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies with Benefits to Bandmates to Lovers, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Living!Phantoms AU, Minor Alex Mercer/Willie, Pining, Podfic & Podficced Works, Sexual Content, but also fluff, is not an established tag so let’s get to work people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:47:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27232234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearlcaddy/pseuds/pearlcaddy
Summary: Julie is a voice major and Luke is a townie with a major chip on his shoulder when it comes to music school students. Their first meeting is a disaster and hooking up definitely makes it worse, but Luke can’t seem to stop being a disaster or hooking up with her. Please send help, he’s honestly such a mess.The Enemies with Benefits to Bandmates to Lovers AU that I’m pretty sure no one was asking for.
Relationships: Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson, Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters (Julie and The Phantoms), Julie Molina/Luke Patterson, Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters
Series: 100 Bad Days [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011168
Comments: 894
Kudos: 1075





	1. Hate Me So Good

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from "100 Bad Days" by AJR  
> Chapter title from "Rootless Tree" by Damien Rice
> 
> I went to USC, so prepare for lots of USC jokes.
> 
> A couple people have asked for the playlist for this, so [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fQCo2E0xEAeYDO9pk8jYu?si=ZJd75ocxT-GSagauI2tmVg)'s my writing playlist.

Luke doesn’t need to be told that he has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to the University of Southern California, okay? He knows. He’s working on it.

He’s thinking about working on it.

He’s thinking about thinking about working on it.

Whatever, give him a couple years.

He’s also used to people being charmed by him, and he admittedly doesn’t always know how to interact with people who are immune to his charms.

So he’s got some flaws and he definitely needs therapy. That’s not a crime.

But it’s for sure why this whole Julie thing plays out the way it does. It is, after all, his decision to 1) live near USC and 2) work near USC. He, Alex, and Reggie may not go to college, but they find a decently-priced house for rent with a garage they can use for rehearsal space, and the gelato place near the University Village is always hiring because students in LA are apparently very desperate for frozen desserts.

Which is how Luke ends working a double shift where he spends hours getting progressively more pissed off at customers (who happen to be students), and then going to a “fuck finals week” house party.

Basically, he’s spent the whole day poking his USC wounds, and now he’s deciding to hang out with students.

He doesn’t make good decisions.

He should turn back.

Especially when he walks in and sees that the house where this party is happening has a karaoke machine. Not a rented one. Like, these kids have actually purchased a karaoke machine.

Honestly, fuck USC students.

(Luke technically knows that only a very small number of USC kids are rich assholes. But emotionally, he really doesn’t know that.)

Alex hands him a drink as soon as he sees his face. “You know you didn’t have to come, right?”

“I had the worst shift of my life. I deserve the world’s entire supply of alcohol, man.” Luke takes a sip from the cup and then gags. “What the fuck is this?”

“White Russian.”

“Bro, cream and alcohol are not meant to mix.”

“There’s an entire Dr. Feelgood song that disagrees with you.”

Reggie makes his presence known by wrapping an arm around Luke and passing him a bottle of beer. “I told you he wouldn’t go for it,” he tells Alex as he snags Luke’s cup.

“Honestly, you’re both such plebs.” Then Alex’s face turns more serious. “Wasn’t today the Monthly Call too?”

Ever since Luke moved out the year before, the Pattersons have unofficially agreed to have one family phone call a month. The phone call always descends into arguing, and Luke feels like the idea of the phone call makes his parents a lot happier than the phone calls themselves.

He could really go without the calls, but there’s a part of him that feels guilty. Alex and Reggie _had_ to cut off contact with their parents. He just doesn’t get along with his, and when it came down to it, they decided they’d rather cut him off and have him not go to college than support a music major. He got into USC’s Thornton School of Music, arguably the top guitar program in the country, and his parents told them they didn’t believe in him enough to fund his dreams (an engineering degree, on the other hand…). But he still hasn’t been able to convince himself that that’s bad enough to warrant going no contact. No matter how many times Alex and Reggie tell him that that’s silly, and there’s no requirement that he stay in contact with people who make him miserable, he hasn’t been able to take the plunge.

“Told them we renewed the lease on the house. Which made Mom realize I’m not coming home anytime soon _and_ that I’m not applying for January admission anywhere. She went _off_.”

Reggie makes a face. “I’m sorry, dude. That sucks.”

Luke shrugs like it doesn’t matter, even though he knows they all know better.

“Whatever. This time next year, Sunset Curve’s gonna be big, and she’s gonna be eating her words. And until then, we got alcohol.” He holds out his bottle and the boys tap their cups to his. He takes a swig and as he lowers the bottle, he sees the front door open and two girls walk in and

everything stops.

Which is silly and cheesy, but seriously, the girl on the left.

He’s not really sure what it is—maybe her amazing curls, or her sweet smile, or the little gap between her front teeth. Or maybe it’s just something intangible about her.

Whatever it is, he notices her.

“There’s Flynn!” Alex waves exuberantly, and the girls head towards them. Which Luke really isn’t prepared for.

“… who’s Flynn?” asks Reggie.

Apparently, Flynn is the girl on the right. She’s dressed to the nines, wearing a bright red mesh dress over a red bralette and a zebra-print mini-skirt. The girl hovering reluctantly beside her could not be more different: she’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants, with her arms crossed protectively across her chest and a backpack slung over one of her shoulders. Everything about this girl screams “I did _not_ choose to be here” and yet he can’t take his eyes off her.

Flynn immediately gives Alex a side hug.

“Flynn is my new best friend.” Alex explains.

“We met five hours ago at Starbucks,” she clarifies.

Luke shakes his head at Alex. His friend’s ability to draw people to him never ceases to amaze. “How do you meet people at Starbucks?”

“I’m a very friendly person. I make friends wherever I go.”

“He spilled his drink on me.”

“Technically, yes. But I like to think that the drink was doing the work of destiny.”

The girl who isn’t Flynn raises an eyebrow. “Destiny famously works through salted caramel frappuccinos.”

Nodding to her friend, Flynn smiles. “This is Julie, my bestie.”

Alex grins. “Nice to meet you, fellow best friend of Flynn. This is Luke and Reggie.”

“ _The_ Luke and Reggie?” Julie gasps sarcastically.

Luke laughs. “We’re bandmates.”

“And housemates and platonic soulmates,” Reggie adds. “Come on, Luke, there’s more to us than just the band.”

Luke is about to playfully disagree when Julie shifts her backpack from one shoulder to the other, and he can finally read her shirt. USC Thornton.

“You go to Thornton?” he asks.

He can feel Alex and Reggie stiffen, but Julie obviously has no idea what she’s stepping into. “Yeah, I’m vocal arts.”

“So, what, like, opera and shit?”

He doesn’t know if his voice makes his distaste clear, or if she’s just not interested in talking about it further, because she just nods. “And shit, yeah.”

Alex quickly steers the conversation elsewhere, and that should have been the extent of it. It should have just been an awkward grouping of people having a chat at a party.

But an hour or so goes by, and Luke’s had a couple more drinks, and Alex, Reggie, and Flynn have all taken turns on the karaoke machine, and Luke tries to claim it and then he notices that they’ve got one of his current favorite bands.

“Fuck yeah, The Stereotypes.” He turns to Julie and offers her a mic, doing his best puppy dog eyes. “You wanna duet?” He’s trying to flirt—he’s gonna suggest “Perfect Girl,” and then he’s gonna sing it to her and it’s gonna be great and smooth and—

“No thanks.” Her smile is tense and her tone cold. Maybe if he had been sober, he would have realized that the tension was private, that it had nothing to do with him. But he’s not, and she’s wearing a Thornton shirt, and he’s had a really shit day, and he’s sick of USC students and their personal karaoke machines, and so he sneers.

“What, the Thornton princess is too good to sing modern music?”

Yeahhhhh. Look, he knows. You don’t need to tell him.

Reggie facepalms and Julie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sure they’ve got ‘Queen of the Night’ on here if you only know boring arias.”

“Dude—” Flynn tries to start in on him, but Julie steps up to him, disdainful.

“First of all, it’s ‘Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen.’ The Queen of the Night is the character who sings that aria. Second of all, I fucking rock ‘Der Hölle Rache’ and you don’t deserve to hear me sing it for free. Third, you couldn’t handle the coloratura, and fourth, you’re an asshole.”

Flynn’s mouth drops open and Alex immediately begins snapping his approval.

Luke whirls on him. “Bro, seriously?”

“Dude, words cannot express how much I am not on your side.”

He looks to Reggie for support, but Reggie shakes his head aggressively.

Turning back to Julie, Luke holds out the mic again. “Then prove me wrong. Sing something post-1700s.”

“Fuck you.”

She pushes past him, disappearing into the mess of the party. Shooting him a filthy look, Flynn runs after her.

Alex and Reggie just stare at him. “Dude, what the actual fuck?”

Again, that should have been the end of it, but half an hour later he runs into her outside the bathroom, and running into each other turns into sniping at each other, sniping turns to arguing, arguing turns to making out, making out turns to him pulling her into the bathroom and her unbuckling his belt, and then he’s inside her and she’s biting his shoulder to muffle her moans, and then she’s pulling her sweatpants back up and, flushed and satisfied, telling him to go to hell, and then she’s gone.

It’s… not what he expected from the evening.

He isn’t sure what to do, because hate sex isn’t a thing he does and she’s really cute. But it’s the end of the academic year, so he doesn’t run into her again.

Four months pass, and he’s forgotten about her until he and the guys throw a house party for the beginning of the new school year. The plan is simple—convince students to come listen to them play by offering them booze, and try to grow a following. Maybe he should have seen the Julie of it coming because, in spite of Luke’s assholery, Alex has indeed converted Flynn into a friend. But he really doesn't, and so he almost forgets how to play when, halfway through the night, after they’ve burned through all their own music and are doing covers, Flynn shows up. With Julie in tow.

Julie shoots him a disdainful glare—so at least she recognizes him?—and he can’t help but notice that she’s not in sweats this time. Instead, she’s in a turquoise crop top and a high-waisted black mini-skirt and she looks… really fucking cute. She was really fucking cute the first time he saw her too, but she looks like she actually wants to be there this time, and she’s doing an actual smile and he really wishes he deserved to be on the receiving end of that smile.

Why did he fuck up so badly?

When the guys finally take a break, Flynn comes up to say hi to Alex and Julie trails after her.

Luke swigs a mouthful of water and smirks at her. “Long time, no see.”

She rolls her eyes, deeply unimpressed. “Does anyone else get the mic, or are we stuck listening to your voice all night?”

“I’d say you could sing ‘Der Hölle Rache,’ but we don’t have an orchestra on hand.” She snorts, and he can’t tell whether she’s interpreted it as a joke or a dig at her. “You _could_ sing with us, but all our music’s from this millennium. Couple centuries after your time, I think.”

She crosses her arms, staring him down. “What are you playing next?”

He tries to think of a song that she’s least likely to know. “‘By Myself.’ FIDLAR.”

By now, Flynn’s noticed what’s going on, and she touches Julie’s arm gently. “Jules, let’s just go.”

But, almost like she’s decided to charge into battle, Julie grabs the mic from him and begins to sing-speak the first lines of “By Myself.” “ _Well I'm cracking one open with the boys by myself_.”

Then she laughs. Most people listening probably think she’s just laughing at the awestruck look on his face. But he knows that laugh. She’s matching the laugh from the recording.

Oh shit.

She keeps going.

_And everybody thinks that I need professional help_

She nods at the guitar in his hands, as if asking if he can play it. He starts the opening strumming, his brain desperately trying to update his conception of her.

_But I don’t wanna think about that anymore_

Reggie and Alex rush to their mics so they can sing with her for “anymore.” Alex is beaming like this is the actual best day of his life.

_And just because I woke up on someone's floor_

This time, Luke is ready, and he too joins in for “someone’s floor.”

_And asked, "Who the fuck am I?"_

Disdainful, Julie glances him up and down as she sings the “who the fuck am I?”

_I didn't know it felt good to cry_

Reggie and Alex begin playing and Julie turns to face the crowd in the backyard. Now that they’re at the verse, she starts singing properly. Flynn reaches out a hand, and she grabs it for a second, both girls beaming. 

_Yeah, I started from the bottom and I'm still at the bottom  
Then I spent the night in jail, turned out it wasn't the bottom  
And I lost so many friends, turned out that I was the problem_

While she sings the last line, she shoots him another pointed glance. He takes his right hand off the guitar for a second to shoo her away playfully.

_And my life is like a pill that's getting harder to swallow_

She points to Reggie. He immediately gets it. “ _Pick it up_!” he yell-sings.

She sings the pre-chorus line.

_Every girl I never had_

She points to Alex. “ _Pick it up_!” he yell-sings.

_Blame it on my mom and dad_

She points her middle finger to Luke. “ _Pick it up_!” he yell-sings, then keeps singing with her.

_And I don't need no one  
Wish I had someone, anyone_

She jumps up onto their unused piano and starts dancing as she sings the chorus.

_Well I’m cracking one open with the boys by myself  
And everybody says that I need professional help  
But I don’t wanna think about that anymore_

He marvels at her performance—it’s clearly not a song that properly showcases her voice, but she knows the lyrics well and she’s acting them out, as if the song is a story she’s telling the crowd. It’s impossible not to get sucked in.

_And just because I woke up on someone’s floor  
And asked, “Where the hell am I?”  
I didn’t know it felt good to cry_

She pops off the piano to dance with Flynn. As the next verse starts, she begins making her way around the backyard, dancing and singing to various people in the crowd.

_Well I fell asleep in summer and woke up in October  
So I called up everybody but nobody came over  
And why does gettin' sober make you feel like a loner?  
And why does gettin' sober make you feel like a loner?_

She spins back to the guys, and this time, she yell-sings the “ _Pick it up!_ ” Reggie takes the first line of the pre-chorus.

_Every girl I never had_

She yell-sings “ _Pick it up!_ ” again, and this time Alex takes the vocal line.

_Blame it on my mom and dad_

“ _Pick it up!_ ” Luke takes over the rest of the pre-chorus, grinning at how easily she’s synced into performing with them.

_And I don't need no one  
Wish I had someone, anyone_

By now, the whole band is singing, and he can see that she’s getting properly into it as she makes her way back to them. The spite that was on her face at the beginning of the song is… okay, still kinda there when she looks at him, but she’s flushed and happy and in the zone. This girl is a fucking musician.

_Well I'm cracking one open with the boys by myself  
And everybody says that I need professional help  
But I don't wanna think about that anymore  
And just because I woke up on someone's floor  
And asked, "Where the hell am I?"  
I didn't know it felt good to cry_

She reaches them in time for Alex’s drum solo, and gestures enthusiastically at him to draw the whole crowd’s attention.

When the final chorus starts up again, she moves to share Reggie’s mic for a couple lines. They grin at each other as they sing together.

_Well I'm cracking one open with the boys by myself  
And everybody says that I need professional help  
But I don't wanna think about that anymore_

Luke nods her over to join him, and with a defiant eyebrow raise, she does. But unlike with Reggie, when she leans into Luke’s mic, it feels like they’re dueling vocally. And she’s definitely winning.

_And just because I woke up on someone's floor_  
_And asked, "Where the hell am I?"_  
_I didn't know it felt good to cry_

The band stops playing. She adopts the stereotypical surfer dude accent of the final spoken lines of the song: “ _Uh, could I get one California burrito?_ ”

“ _No cheese_ ,” Luke pipes up.

She grins at him, then glances to Reggie and Alex, as if confirming their food order. “ _And like, two carne asada tacos?_ ”

The backyard bursts into cheers and Flynn immediately sweeps Julie into a hug. “That was so fricking awesome!”

Luke steps back to stand between Alex and Reggie.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Alex is grinning, definitely at Luke rather than with him.

“Is there a phrase stronger than ‘I fucked up?”

“You Luked it,” Reggie suggests.

Luke smacks his arm lightly, but he can’t really get mad. “I was a major dick.”

Alex cuts in. “You were a dick regardless of whether she slayed that song. But now you’re a dick _and_ you were hella wrong.”

“What the fuck do I do?”

“Do you know how to grovel?” Reggie asks.

Luke meets Julie’s gaze across the room. Her face is flushed with triumph and her eyes are dancing, and for a moment, it reminds him of what she looked like immediately after their bathroom hookup. She’s clearly trying to look smug, but she’s just so happy that she doesn’t really pull it off. That smile sparks a little skip deep in his rib cage.

“I guess I’m about to find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs/musical references in this chapter:  
> • "Milk and Alcohol" by Dr. Feelgood  
> • "Perfect Girl" by The Stereotypes  
> • "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" (aka if people have heard one aria, it's probably this one)  
> • "By Myself" by FIDLAR


	2. If You Court This Disaster I'll Point You Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Call and Answer" by Barenaked Ladies
> 
> Fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fQCo2E0xEAeYDO9pk8jYu?si=ZJd75ocxT-GSagauI2tmVg)

Fifteen minutes after their impromptu performance, Luke sees Julie duck into the narrow alleyway behind the garage. As he moves to follow, Alex grabs his arm. “For the love of god, don’t bounce.”

“What?”

“You do this bouncy walk when you’re trying to flirt.” Reggie explains.

What? “I do not.”

Alex shakes his head. “You do. It’s deeply strange.”

It doesn’t sound _im_ plausible, so Luke moves on to the more important part. “Why would I be trying to flirt with Julie?”

Alex and Reggie make eye contact and sigh.

“You know after that party you had a hickey here.” Alex taps his own shoulder.

“I don’t even know if I would call it a hickey,” Reggie points out. “It looked more like—”

“Okay, no bouncing! Jeez.”

Luke slides past, only glancing back to shake an insolent head at them. The boys watch him go, unimpressed.

He slips behind the garage. Julie is leaning against the chain link fence that lines the property, one foot stretched out to rest on the garage wall across from her. Her gaze is on the night sky, wistful, as if she’s searching for something in the single cloud over LA. There’s something heartbreakingly beautiful about the moment, like he’s intruding on a mournful prayer, and he stops walking. Maybe he should just turn back.

But she’s already heard him coming and glances over. She crosses her arms, immediately swapping the sadness on her face for defiance. He holds up his hands. “Coming to you on my hands and knees, I swear.”

“Really? Cause it looks like feet.”

“I really like these jeans, so I’d rather stay upright.” She doesn’t look impressed. “But I can crawl if you need.”

“I’d never ask you to do that to a good pair of jeans.” She smiles wryly.

He steps further into the gap, trying hard not to bounce.

“Okay, so,” he starts to count off on his fingers. “I can be a dick about music, I’ve been told I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to USC, and I had a really shit day. Not excuses. Just an explanation.”

“Explanation for… today or for four months ago?”

“Both?”

“Doesn’t really say much for your personal growth.” It’s a fair hit—he can’t help but chuckle. “Just USC? Not music schools in general?”

“Music schools in general. But especially USC.”

“Why? Were your parents Bruins or something?”

Luke snorts at the idea of his parents as UCLA alums. The normally mild-mannered Emily and Mitch Patterson become absolute rage-filled demons every year when the USC Trojans face the UCLA Bruins on the football field, and during the week leading up to the big rivalry game, no one is allowed to even wear light blue in Emily’s presence, or risk being called Bruin scum.

It’s… intense.

“Definitely not.”

“Then why the hate for USC?”

Maybe he should be honest. But he barely knows her, and even here in this tiny strip of land behind a garage, she holds her head high, looking every bit the Thornton princess he accused her of being. Like some kind of untouchable musical goddess. So he deflects.

“Well, you know what they say about USC.”

“No, what do they say?” she asks mildly, but dangerously.

They say the University of Spoiled Children (which, again, he knows intellectually is an outdated stereotype) and she definitely knows it, but she looks like she may find a way to stab him with words if he says that.

“Uhhh, nothing.”

She raises a deeply unimpressed eyebrow. “None of that was an apology.”

Putting both his hands to his heart, he tries to channel all the sincerity in his body. “I’m really sorry. I’m a dick, you are a human wrecking ball, and I throw myself at your feet.”

“Yet you remain standing.”

“Good pair of jeans?”

She rolls her eyes, then looks down at her hands. He leans against the wall of the garage across from her, trying not to touch her leg. The corner of her mouth twists into a pained smile. “Normally I would have said ‘yes’ to karaoke, but…”

“You really don’t owe me an explanation.”

“Oh, I know. But I think the explanation will make you feel worse.” Her face fills with that same expression as when she took the mic from him: like she’s leaping into battle. “My mom died six months ago. She was the one who got me into music, and it’s been basically impossible for me to sing since then.”

Oh god.

He is

really, truly, the world’s biggest dick.

“I am so, so sorry.”

She shrugs, but there’s a tension to it. The same shrug he does when the boys say they’re sorry about his parents and he doesn’t want to unpack his feelings.

“When did you start singing again?” he asks, for lack of anything else to say.

“About fifteen minutes ago.” His jaw almost drops open. “Apparently loving music and wanting to feel connected to my mother again are less powerful motivators for me than spite. I would thank you but, you know. Fuck you.”

He chuckles, because he really doesn’t know what else to do. “That was, uh, pretty epic back there. You’re incredible.”

Avoiding his gaze, she shakes her head. “I haven’t been incredible for six months.”

He steps across the gap, leaning sideways against the fence next to her. “Agree to disagree.”

She glances up at him through her eyelashes. “I didn’t agree to that.” But her voice is sassy, and almost… breathy, and he’s reminded all at once of the heat in their bathroom encounter. Her eyes flicker to his lips briefly, and for a moment it feels like it might be possible to move past his screw ups.

So naturally, he has to create a new screw up. “Seriously, you know how many people would kill for an ounce of your talent? Or for your place at Thornton?”

“Murder is unnecessary. They’re welcome to my place and my voice.”

Maybe he could have handled the place comment, but the voice?

“How can you say that? No real musician would ever give up music.”

She steps away from the fence and from him, steel entering her voice. “Then I guess I’m not a real musician.”

If Alex were there, he would give Luke that look that says “you’re putting music over people’s feelings again”—but there’s no Alex, and therefore no stopping the foot-in-mouth express.

“That performance you just gave? That’s a real musician. You can’t honestly tell me you didn’t love that.”

“I didn’t.” But she says it more like a wish than a truth.

“You’re lying.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I don’t need to. I saw your face.”

“Yeah? Do you see my face now?” She holds a middle finger up in front of her nose.

He steps closer to her, trying to see all of her face in the shadows. “I may not know you very well, but I know what you look like when you’re satisfied.”

She leans in defiantly. “You know what I look like when you _think_ I’m satisfied.”

Disbelieving, he scoffs. “Oh, you were.”

She just shrugs coyly. “Maybe, maybe not.”

“Oh, you wanna go again?”

She bites back a grin, and he realizes how close they’ve gotten. Her eyes dart to his lips again, and for a moment, he thinks she’ll say yes. But then Flynn calls from elsewhere in the backyard. “Jules? Where are you?”

She dashes her eyebrows at him. “In your dreams,” she murmurs, and slips past him.

Turning to watch her go, he tries to think of something clever or sexy or _anything_ to say. “We only make it to my dreams after we’re done in yours.” 

She glances back before she leaves the alleyway. “Not convinced that made any sense, but you do you.”

He doesn’t say “I’d rather do you,” and honestly, thank god for small favors.

* * *

Reggie scratches his head. “Does she hate him or does she want to sleep with him? Neither? Both?”

The guys hover on the other side of the glass counter at the gelato shop, dawdling while Luke smooths the gelatos. The shop has a designated ice cream smoother, which seems to be a glorified term for “metal spatula,” and when a lot of gelato has been scooped out of the various rectangular tubs, he’s supposed to smooth down the gelato in all the tubs so that each tub has a flat surface.

It honestly makes the gelato look really gnarly and unappealing and it is definitely the most pathetic thing he’s ever been paid money to do, but it gives him a good excuse to hang by the counter and chat with Alex and Reggie while he’s on shift.

Alex massages his nose bridge, as if that’s where a migraine is building. “Have you tried just not being a dick to this girl?”

“Yes! But it turns out I’m not good at that. How do you talk to people?”

Alex stares at him. “Oh no.”

“What?”

“If you think I’m a good resource for learning how to flirt, I’m very concerned.”

Luke is pretty sure that he’s not trying to flirt with Julie, but he gets momentarily derailed. “What about the skateboarder?”

“… the guy who ran me over?”

“I think he was trying to hit on you.”

“ _Hit_ , not hit on.”

Luke returns the now smooth chocolate hazelnut gelato to its slot in the display case and looks to Reggie. “What about you?”

“To be honest, most of what I do is winking. Not a lot of follow through.”

Luke almost pulls on his hair, before remembering that he’d have to re-wash his hands. He rinses off the smoother at the sink and then pulls out the hazelnut gelato. He scrapes down the sides of the tub, trying not to take his aggression out on the flimsy plastic.

“Maybe I’m overthinking this. I mean, she’s a Trojan. She probably sucks and I don’t care.”

Reggie chuckles. “Is that the vibe you think you’re giving off right now? ‘I don’t care?’”

Luke shoots Reggie a middle finger and turns pointedly to Alex. “How do you talk to girls?”

“Again, concerning that you think I’m the resource for this. If you want someone to explain your feelings to you, I’m your guy, but I don’t think you’re there yet.”

“Who said anything about feelings?”

“Proves my point.”

Luke stabs the gelato flat. “Look, this isn’t about”—he realizes he’s about to say romance—“sex. It’s about music. That girl’s a natural performer. And shit, I mean that song obviously didn’t make use of her vocal style, but you could hear on some of those longer notes that she’s got a fucking _voice_. I shoulda suggested a ballad.”

Reggie chuckles nervously. “You’re not really gonna ask us to play ballads at house parties, are you?”

“I will revolt,” Alex cuts in. “I play drums to escape my feelings, not embrace them.” He tries to catch Luke’s gaze. “Two things. One: I don’t think it’s about sex. You were looking at her with little cartoon heart eyes.”

Luke shoves the hazelnut gelato back into the display case. It clatters into its slot with a bang. “Bro, I do not do heart eyes!”

“ _And two_ ,” Alex continues pointedly. “Flynn doesn’t share details because Flynn is an excellent friend, but reading between the lines, Julie’s had a really hard year.” Luke hopes his face doesn’t give anything away. “If she says she doesn’t want to sing, you have to respect that.”

“But she’s a musician.” Luke whines as he rinses the smoother off at the sink again.

“A lot of people have talent,” Reggie points out. “Not everyone wants to use it.”

Luke takes out the pistachio gelato and slams the smoother into it with unnecessary force. “So, what? She gets to go to that school, have a shit ton of opportunities _and_ that kinda talent, and then she just ignores it?”

Pleasantly surprised, Reggie turns to Alex. “He didn’t need you to explain his feelings that time!”

“He’s growing. I’m so proud.” Alex leans on the counter, but Luke shakes the ice cream smoother at him.

“Off the glass, I’m not polishing that shit again.”

Alex holds up his hands and leans back, but maintains his focus. “Luke, we’re gonna meet a lot of people with talent and opportunities that they don’t use, and a lot of people without talent who get opportunities they don’t deserve. You have to be okay with that. You can’t be a dick to those people. Especially not if you’re also making heart eyes at them.”

Luke opens his mouth to protest, but both Reggie and Alex look like they may put their hands on the glass if he pushes them.

“They’re bedroom eyes, not heart eyes,” he insists weakly.

Reggie blinks rapidly. “Did you just say bedroom eyes?”

“Yeah, you know. Bedroom eyes. It’s what Alex gets whenever he talks to that skateboarder.” Luke shoots the drummer a teasing smile.

“Okay, you know what? You can figure out your own damn feelings, because I am leaving.” Alex marches to the door, then glances back. “Also, don’t forget that we have an open mic tonight. Don’t be late.”

He opens the door, then turns back again. “Don’t be as late as you usually are.”

Luke waves a hand, shooing him out. Then he turns to Reggie with a mischievous grin. “What do you think are the odds you can find the skateboarder on social and invite him to our next gig?”

Rubbing scheming hands together, Reggie lights up. “If there is one skill I have, it’s Twitter. Consider it done.”

* * *

If Luke does say so himself, they kill at the open mic night. It’s probably the tightest they’ve ever played “Now or Never,” and he’s riding an absolute high as they hang around to watch the other acts. Which might explain why it takes him so long to notice the two girls in the corner of the room.

He smacks Alex’s arm. “Julie and Flynn are here.”

Alex doesn’t look at them, instead glancing innocently at Luke. “You said you don’t care.”

“Dude, can you stop being smug?”

“No.” Alex grins, then takes enough pity on him to offer an explanation. “Flynn thought Julie might have an easier time singing for a random crowd than for her classmates. I happened to mention that there was an open mic night and the rest is history.”

“Are you trying to set us up?”

“Oh no, she’s clearly going through something and you’re too much of a mess to be any good for her in a relationship right now.” Luke is surprised to find that he has the urge to disagree, and he determinedly swallows the impulse. “But she seems cool, Flynn’s my friend, and your reactions are really funny.”

Luke really wants to ask if she was there when they performed, but he doesn’t want to add fodder to the “teasing Luke about Julie” fire.

Even still, he can’t keep his eyes from returning to her. She’s wearing a dark blue tube dress that, under normal circumstances, would be commanding his full attention. But her face is practically vibrating with nerves, her arms are crossed across her chest, and her eyes watch the stage like a guillotine. 

Gone is the confident girl laughing in his face to the tune of FIDLAR.

Flynn takes her friend’s hand, gives her encouraging smile, and pulls her back towards the green room.

Luke waits a second before popping to his feet. Alex groans. “Did you not listen to anything I said?”

But Reggie and Alex trail after him because they are nothing if not loyal (or maybe they just love rubbernecking the travesty that is his life.)

Luke grabs the green room door just before it shuts and locks behind the girls, and slips in to hear her telling Flynn “—I just can’t.”

“Not going to sing us an aria, Princess?” 

Luke can almost hear Alex’s disappointment in him.

But he stands by it, because Julie said she was motivated by spite. If she needs to hate him in order to perform, it’s worth it.

Julie stiffens and turns around very slowly. Her shock answers the question of whether she knew he was there. “How are you always around?”

“Have we met some extra times I don’t know about?” he asks, smirking. “Was it in your dreams?”

Reggie groans in shame behind him, but… look, he’s doing a callback, okay? HE’S BEING WITTY.

From the slight smile on her face, she gets it. “More like my nightmares.”

“Your nightmares sound very sexy. I’m jealous.”

Flynn scoffs, unimpressed. “Really, dude?”

But Julie scrutinizes his face. “No, Flynn, he’s trying to piss me off.”

“… Yeah, that’s why I’m angry at him.”

“No, he’s doing a thing.” She addresses him pointedly. “And it’s not going to work.”

“Of course it will.” He’s had way worse schemes succeed on the basis of pure confidence, and he doesn’t see why this should be any different. “Just tell me what you’re gonna sing, I’ll tell you that you’re going to be terrible at it, and then you can go prove me wrong.”

Everyone else seems to relax when they realize that he is, in a possibly misguided and unhelpful way, being supportive.

She laughs. “Except now you’ve given away your evil plan.” Her smile turns pained. “Spite was a one-time thing, I think. I can’t go out there.”

The stage manager pokes her head in. “Julie Molina, you’re on in one minute.”

Julie opens her mouth, presumably to tell the stage manager that she’s not going on, but Luke steps closer to get her attention.

“Would it help if you weren’t alone up there? You can, like, pick an angry ballad with a guitar and yell it at me on stage.”

Her face softens at the offer, but… “I don’t even know what I would sing. I was supposed to do…” She stares off blankly into the distance, seemingly overwhelmed by her pain. “But I can’t.”

He ducks a bit to grab her eyes again.

“Maybe you just need to perform something that lets you get out of your head a bit, you know? Something that makes you feel…” His voice trails off.

“What?”

“Hot-blooded?” He raises a questioning eyebrow.

“Not exactly my kind of music. And it requires a whole band.”

Luke gestures to the guys behind him. “I got a whole band.” He glances back at them, questioning, and he’s reminded that, in spite of all the time they spend mocking him, they’re the absolute best friends on the planet because they give him a thumbs up without pause. “And maybe not being your kind of music is good. You’re not trying to wow the crowd with some complex vocals. You’re just performing a badass song. And if you get out there and decide you can’t sing, then you can just dance and we’ll sing. No pressure. I’m always down to play Foreigner covers.”

She trembles. He tries for spite again.

“Or, you know, we’ll all go out there and sing ‘Der Hölle Rache.’ Reggie’s been working on his coloratura.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You have no idea what that is, do you?”

“Not even remotely. So show us how it’s done.”

“‘Hot Blooded’ definitely doesn’t have coloratura.”

“See, Princess, that’s why we need you out there.”

“You know I hate being called ‘Princess.’”

“Yeah. Is it working?”

It’s that look yet again: the girl about to charge into battle. A slow grin spreads across his face, and a matching one starts to appear on hers. Then she utters the sweetest words in the English language, Luke’s own personal motto:

“Fuck it. Let’s do this.”

Alex snags his lucky sticks, and Luke and Reggie grab their instruments from where they’d stashed them in the corner of the green room. The three guys quickly file out and head towards the backstage area.

Luke glances back to see Flynn put her hand on Julie’s arm, asking her a question. Julie nods, and her friend gives her an encouraging smile before heading back out into the crowd. But before she disappears into the roomful of bodies, Flynn shoots her eyes to his for a moment. He can’t tell whether the look on her face is concern or a threat. He tries an encouraging nod, but she just stalks away.

Julie meets them at the side of the stage and hesitates. He grabs her hand, gives it a quick squeeze, and shoots her what he hopes is a supportive smile. Then he tugs her out onto the stage.

When the guys have set up, he shoots her a questioning smile. She swallows and nods back, clearly trying to find that battle face again.

Luke starts the opening riff, directing it more at her than at the crowd. She counts them in. “1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4!” and begins to sing.

_Well, I'm hot blooded, check it and see  
I got a fever of a hundred and three  
Come on baby, do you do more than dance?  
I'm hot blooded, I'm hot blooded_

She’s standing still, not getting into singing the way she did with “By Myself.” So Luke steps away from his mic and snags her gaze. He winks as he leans into her mic, taking over the verse.

_You don't have to read my mind, to know what I have in mind_

Which is a hell of a thing to sing while staring right into her eyes, but her whole face flushes and he knows it’s at least clicked her into the mood of the song. It’s not about singing anymore. It’s about flirting.

_Honey you oughta know  
Now you move so fine_

He flicks his gaze up and down her body, exaggerated so the whole crowd can see it.

Definitely that’s why he does it. For the performance.

_Let me lay it on the line  
I wanna know what you're doin' after the show_

He raises a suggestive eyebrow. Leaning in close to share the mic, she rolls her eyes playfully as she joins him for the pre-chorus.

_Now it's up to you, we can make a secret rendezvous  
Just me and you, I'll show you lovin' like you never knew_

After shooting him a heated gaze, she marches back to the front of the stage, belting out the chorus to the crowd, who are only too happy to sing it back. 

_That's why, I'm hot blooded, check it and see  
I got a fever of a hundred and three  
Come on baby, do you do more than dance?  
I'm hot blooded, hot blooded_

She dances backwards and nods him over to her. He steps over quickly while she sings the first two lines. 

_If it feels alright, maybe you can stay all night  
Shall I leave you my key?_

She holds her mic out to him, and he takes the end of the verse.

_But you've got to give me a sign, come on girl  
Some kind of sign, tell me, are you hot mama?_

He leans in close, the mic the only thing keeping their lips apart. Once again, he eyes her appreciatively. This time, he doesn’t care whether the audience notices.

_You sure look that way to me_

Her whole face lights up in a pleased flush, and she joins him again for the pre-chorus.

_Are you old enough? Will you be ready when I call your bluff?_

They exchange a brief grossed-out look—not lyrics they’d ever clocked before. But their matching reactions make they both grin.

_Is my timing right? Did you save your love for me tonight?_

She returns to the front of the stage, dancing more enthusiastically. Normally, Reggie and Alex would have been encouraging her to come sing with them, but from the awkward glances his friends are exchanging, they’re definitely not comfortable doing that for this song.

_That’s why I'm hot blooded, check it and see  
Feel the fever burning inside of me  
Come on baby, do you do more than dance?  
I'm hot blooded, I'm hot blooded, I'm hot_

She shifts aside to let Luke take center stage for his guitar solo. But as she keeps dancing, he leans his back against hers, shooting her a smile over his shoulder. She doesn’t break his gaze as he plays. Indicating her eyebrows at his guitar, she grins appreciatively. He flushes with the non-verbal compliment.

When he finishes his solo, she holds the mic between them and they sing together, still back-to-back.

_Now it's up to you, can we make a secret rendezvous?  
Oh, before we do, you'll have to get away from you know who_

He whispers “Voldemort?” in her ear as he heads back to his mic stand.

She laughs and takes the center stage for the final chorus. Spinning around, banging her head, singing her heart out. Even though she’s once again singing a song that doesn’t takes proper advantage of her voice, she’s still owning both the song and the stage. He’s struck by that same realization that he had at the garage party: she’s a performer, a fucking world class performer. She’s meant to do this.

_Well, I'm hot blooded, check it and see  
I got a fever of a hundred and three  
Come on baby, do you do more than dance?  
I'm hot blooded, I'm hot blooded_

As they head into the outro, he stays by his mic and sings the “hot blooded” part of each line. She replies with the end of each line, their gaze locked on one another.

_Hot blooded, every night  
Hot blooded, you're looking so tight  
Hot blooded, now you're driving me wild  
Hot blooded, I'm so hot for you, child_

They exchange that same dubious look at “child” and she laughs through her wince. 

_Hot blooded, I'm a little bit high  
Hot blooded, you're a little bit shy  
Hot blooded, you're making me sing  
Hot blooded, for you, sweet sweet thing_

When the song ends, they only get a second to stare at each another, panting for air, before the whole place erupts in cheers.

They all take their bows. But before they leave the stage, Luke gestures specifically to Julie again, generating a round of cheers for her. She flushes with success and, conceding, takes an extra bow.

As they head back to the green room, Alex throws his arms around Reggie and Luke’s shoulders, pulling them in close to whisper, “Luke, in the future, maybe just have sex with her directly, and don’t involve us?”

“Come on, that was a killer performance.”

“It _was_ killer. And it was very uncomfortable to participate in, especially as a gay man.”

“Sorry.” Luke slows down for a second, watching Julie go ahead of them into the green room. He looks at his friends. “Seriously, though. Thanks for doing that.”

“Of course.” Reggie grins. “Julie seems cool.”

“I guess it could have been worse.” Alex concedes. “You could have asked us to do ‘Love You Madly.’” Luke shoves Alex away, licks his finger, and sticks it in Alex’s ear.

Alex leaps away from him. “I can’t believe you technically qualify as an adult.”

As Luke and Reggie pack up their guitars in the green room, he realizes that Julie is fiddling with her backpack and her phone. She doesn’t actually have anything to pack up, so she’s lingering. To talk to him?

Something warms inside him. Probably he’s horny. Definitely not a crush.

“Okay, so obviously I pegged you wrong with opera. What kinda stuff do you do?” he asks.

She immediately drops her phone in her bag and pops up to sit on the makeup counter, giving him her full attention.

“The stuff I used to write was, like, Macy Gray, but with Alicia Keys’ vocals?”

“Fuck yeah.”

He hears the door click shut behind Alex and Reggie, who have apparently fled. Julie and Luke are alone in here. He sets down his guitar.

“So, I was right.”

“Despite all evidence to the contrary?” she asks.

“You _are_ incredible. And you _are_ a musician.”

She nods, the flush of success still on her face. Like something got unlocked out on that stage that she hasn’t seen in a while. “I am.” Her face falls a tiny bit. “I just wish I felt like one.” 

“It’s a process.” He suspects that she might do better if she could perform with others, if she wasn’t alone on the stage. But he doesn’t know if that would be a rude suggestion and he would really like to have an interaction with her that doesn’t turn into an argument. “You should still be proud. Because you absolutely killed it out there.”

“I did, didn’t I?” She grins and leans back on her arms. In that position, it’s hard for his gaze to not go to her chest. As he drags his eyes back up to her face, he realizes, from her smirk and the way she bites her lip, that it’s not an accident.

He slides over to her (yeah, there may be some bouncing in his walk), and rests his hands on either side of her legs.

“How are you planning to celebrate?” he asks.

“Not sure. Any ideas?” Her smile is coy and inviting.

He leans forward and brings his lips to her exposed shoulder, then to her neck. She rolls her head to the side to grant him easier access and exhales a shaky breath as he brings his lips to her ear. “The other day, you seemed disappointed that I wasn’t on my knees,” he whispers. “Would you like me to be?”

She lets out a breathy moan and gazes up at him through her eyelashes. “Probably for the best,” she murmurs. “Otherwise, I’ll think you have no follow through.”

That half-smirk, and that flush of victory that’s still making her face glow…

He claims her mouth in a bruising kiss. Her fingers immediately weave into his hair as she drags his body to her, just as heated. He runs his greedy hands down her back, pulling her torso right against his. For a second—holding her to him, standing between her legs, feeling her warmth under him—he’s almost tempted to ignore the plan, to lose himself inside her instead. But this is her victory march, and hers alone.

He runs his hands down to her thighs and presses her knees further apart. Reluctantly, he breaks off their kiss. “I’d hate for you to get the wrong impression.” He smirks, and lets himself enjoy her answering smirk for a moment.

Then he falls to his knees.

* * *

“What took you so long—oh, gross.”

Luke pops into the alley behind the venue, pulling on his flannel jacket. Alex scrunches up his face in a look of deep disappointment.

“What?”

“Wipe your mouth, dude. It’s all… glossy.”

Reggie turns to them, confused. Then, at the sight of Luke’s face, groans. “Dude, communal green room.”

Luke shrugs and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, unapologetic. “My bad, won’t happen again.”

Alex sighs heavily. “Yes, it will.”

“Yeah, probably. Sorry.” He claps Alex on the back and leads the way out of the alley, a pronounced bounce in his step. “I was being respectful. You said you didn’t want to be involved in my sex life.”

“Yet I continue to feel very involved.” Alex sighs.

When they reach the end of the alley, Luke glances back in time to see Flynn and Julie stepping through the back door. For a split second, Julie’s eyes meet his, and she smiles. 

He smiles back, and it’s not until he’s reached the main street that he realizes that there was no smirking in their exchange—just a soft fondness.

Oh no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent a solid couple of hours trying to find a song that fit the complex blend of emotions I wanted to convey with them for this chapter… and then decided, fuck it, they’re doing “Hot Blooded” because I am as subtle as a sledgehammer.
> 
> Also, as will become very apparent, I worked at a gelato shop (not at USC), it was the worst job of my life, and I'm still mad about it. So poor Luke gets to be mad about it too.
> 
> Songs/musical references in this chapter:  
> • "Now or Never"  
> • "Hot Blooded" by Foreigner  
> • "Love You Madly" by Cake (which I've now joked about having them sing in multiple fics and still haven't gotten to write)  
> • Macy Gray (I really like "Demons" and "Beauty in the World")  
> • Alicia Keys (I mean... it's Alicia Keys, she needs no introduction)


	3. Have You No Idea That You're In Deep?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Do I Wanna Know?" by Arctic Monkeys (presumably said by Alex in a very exasperated tone of voice)
> 
> Sorry if you didn't want an eight page scene in a gelato shop, because that's what you're getting. (Honestly, someone really needs to stop me. I am out of control.)
> 
> Fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fQCo2E0xEAeYDO9pk8jYu?si=ZJd75ocxT-GSagauI2tmVg)

As it turns out, Luke is really bad at having a crush.

Which is new for him. He’s had a lot of visual crushes, where he likes the look of someone, never talks to them, and just comes up with a whole fake personality for them so that he can play out random romantic scenarios in his head. And there are occasionally people in music classes and at music clubs who manage to snag his attention for a bit. But for him to really notice someone for an extensive period of time, they kinda have to be as wrapped up in music as he is, preferably in his direct line of sight. They have to do something like, say, rip a mic out of his hand and kick his ass with a song he loves. And, well, no one else has really done that before.

So he’s completely unprepared to be unable to stop thinking about a girl he’s interacted with for all of two hours. Every time he leaves his house, he imagines a scenario where they’ll run into one another.

Maybe they’ll both be in the cereal aisle at Ralphs.

Maybe she’ll come into the gelato shop while he’s working.

Maybe she’ll be at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the film school when he drops by to bug Reggie at work. (He hasn’t worked out why she would be at the film school in this hypothetical scenario, but he’s still self-conscious every time he visits Reggie.)

Any time he thinks he sees anyone who looks even remotely like her, his heart starts to go haywire and his palms immediately break into sweat.

Probably that’s just because he’s horny.

Probably.

Probably not.

Okay, fine, he has a fucking crush, are you happy?

He’s trying not to bring it up to Alex and Reggie, because he knows they’ll be _insufferable_. But he suspects Alex knows, because Alex is very rudely not mentioning Julie in passing. Sure, it’s not like he normally does that because he’s friends with Flynn and doesn’t really know Julie, but it still feels like it’s on purpose.

After six days of no one mentioning Julie and no actual sightings of her, Luke cracks.

It’s been a nightmare shift—the regional manager is in from corporate to inspect how well the shop adheres to procedures, and she has been aggressively unimpressed by everything so far, especially Luke (which feels very unfair, because he’s the least responsible for the clusterfuck that is this shop). While she’s on her lunch, Alex and Reggie are hovering so they can distract him/talk about the weekend’s garage party, and damn it, he deserves to at least hear about Julie.

“You inviting Flynn?” he asks casually as he smooths the chocolate gelato.

From the other side of counter, Alex raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “Flynn?”

“Yeah, did you invite her?

“You are not subtle.”

“I just wanna know if your friends are coming.” Alex remains unmoved. Feeling petulant, Luke turns to Reggie. “You invite Willie?”

“Already DM’d him.”

Immediately suspicious, Alex eyes them. “Who’s Willie?”

Reggie smiles innocently. “New Twitter friend.”

Luke tries to hide his smile by going to the sink to wash the smoother. But when he returns to the counter, Alex is evaluating him with a serious look. “What? I’m excited. Sue me. We got a lot of new followers out of the last party.”

“Flynn let slip that Julie’s grieving. Please tell me you didn’t know.”

Luke dodges the question, though he realizes that the dodge itself is an answer. “It’s just sex. Twice. Two… bits of sex.”

“ _Bits_ of sex?”

“What, she’s grieving, so she’s not allowed to have sex?”

“ _She_ can do what she wants. _You_ shouldn’t be trying to have no strings attached sex with a girl you have a crush on when you can’t be a good source of emotional support because you’re a hot mess.”

Luke is really not prepared to unpack all that, so he focuses on what he can. “You think I’m hot?” He winks.

Reggie grins. “Your hair looks sexy pushed back.”

Luke points the ice cream smoother at him appreciatively.

Alex groans. “How is _Mean Girls_ still relevant?”

Wounded, Reggie puts a sarcastic hand on his heart. “How is Shakespeare still relevant?”

“That’s not—okay. Look, Luke—"

“Alex, maybe ease up?” Reggie suggests gently. His bandmates exchange a glance, and Luke suddenly has that uncomfortably itchy feeling that comes from realizing that people have been talking about you behind your back.

Alex sighs and holds his hands up. “I just want it on the record—I think this is a terrible idea and someone’s gonna get hurt.”

“Noted. Did you invite Flynn?”

“I did. But Flynn is not your biggest fan, so don’t assume that me inviting Flynn means she’s said anything to Julie.”

Luke sighs heavily and starts smoothing the salted caramel gelato. “I never understood the ‘I can’t stop thinking about them’ thing. I always assumed it was overdramatic bullshit.”

Reggie gives him a sympathetic smile. “Nope.”

“Well, it sucks and I hate it.”

A soft look crosses Alex’s face and Luke suspects he’s about to start giving his Human Feelings 101 lecture when the regional manager appears in front of the counter.

“Mr. Patterson, I assume these are customers?” She eyes the cups of gelato in Alex and Reggie’s hands.

Luke forces a smile. “Yep.”

Alex hooks his arm around Reggie’s neck. “Customers who are just leaving.” As he and Reggie sprint through the door, the regional manager turns back to Luke.

“I hope we’re not fraternizing during work hours.”

Luke wants desperately to point out that the gelato place is empty because it’s raining outside (or what in LA counts as raining), but he also wants to continue earning minimum wage. “Never.”

She suddenly notices that he’s smoothing and lets out a small (and he feels melodramatic) scream. “What are you doing?”

“… smoothing the gelatos? Like you asked me to?”

In retrospect, he’ll remember hearing the door open, but not at the moment.

“Why would you think that’s what smoothing the gelato is?”

He wants to point out that there is literally nothing intuitive about either the phrase or the act of “smoothing gelato,” but he settles on, “This is how they trained me.”

She gestures at the counter full of smoothed gelatos and sends him an award-winning condescending smile. “I think it should have been pretty obvious that that doesn’t look very appealing. I’ll show you smoothing.” She moves to walk around the counter, and that’s when he sees who just came in the door. His heart plummets, possibly through the floor and down to the earth’s core.

Of course.

All week, he’s been hoping to see her, and the one moment he wants to implode with shame because he’s getting a verbal lashing over _smoothing gelatos_ , she turns up.

Julie gives him a small tense smile.

The regional manager takes the smoother from him and begins pulling all the salted caramel gelato to one end of the tub. It now looks like the tub is full on that end, like the missing gelato was just removed from the back in slices.

She makes a little twirl on the top, completing the look, and sends him another big patronizing smile. “Now, doesn’t that look much better?” Annoyingly, it does, but it still seems like a massive waste of time. “Makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it?”

Before he has to debase himself with an answer, Julie clears her throat loudly. “Could I order something?”

The regional manager jumps, clearly not having noticed her. “Of course, dear.” But she doesn’t move away, clearly intending to watch how he takes an order.

Julie forces a smile and crosses her arms. “Sorry, am _I_ being evaluated?”

“Oh no, of course. I’ll be in the back.” Before she leaves, the regional manager shoots him a cold look. “You’ll smooth them all properly?”

“Course,” he forces out through clenched teeth.

As soon as she disappears to the back, he exhales, sagging into himself.

“She seems…” Julie trails off, eyeing the door to the back as if they’ll be overheard.

“Yeah. Regional manager. In for a couple days for an inspection.”

“How are you doing?”

“Well, she noticed that we display our napkins wrong, but not that the boxes of cones are stored on the ground, which is a health code violation.”

She blinks, taking it all in. “There’s a wrong way to display napkins?”

“Obviously they’re meant to be fanned out, not put in a pile. As the customer, I’m sure you’ll agree that that fundamentally changes your experience of the gelato.”

“Of course. I would never buy gelato from a place that didn’t fan its napkins.”

“Then it’s lucky you didn’t come in before today.”

She smiles at him, and it’s like all the shittiness of a shift spent under the regional manager’s scrutiny drains away.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi.”

For a moment, he lets himself get lost in that smile.

She grins. “It’s weird seeing you in sleeves.”

He glances down at his work shirt, as if surprised to see it. “Yeah, apparently my armpits aren’t up to code. The only health code they care about.”

She steps closer to the counter. “What can I order that’s the least trouble for you?”

He grins at the question. “Well, the soft serve? But the assistant manager is the only one who knows how to clean the machine and he, uh, hasn’t.”

“How often is it meant to be cleaned?”

“Every three days.”

“When was it last cleaned?”

“Assume I can’t answer that without opening us up to a lawsuit?” Luke has to stage a protest every week, refusing to serve from the machine until it’s cleaned, and it is definitely the most tiresome part of his job.

Her eyes bug. “Is it okay for you to be here?”

Even if it’s largely sarcastic, he still grins at her concern. “You worried about me?”

“Worried about a listeria outbreak, apparently.”

“At the moment it’s less a health concern and more that it tastes absolutely disgusting. The soft serve, that is. Basically everything else we sell _is_ a health concern.”

She shakes her head. “Is anything safe here?”

“Gelato. It arrives in tubs. We scoop from them. Kinda hard for us to fuck up.”

“Okay, can I have…” Her voice trails off. “She worked so hard on the salted caramel. Is it okay if I screw that up?”

“Please screw that up.”

“Can I—”

The doors open and a blonde girl sweeps in, holding her Macbook Pro on her head to shield her hair from the rain.

See, this is why he hates USC kids.

The girl barges over to the counter. “Large chocolate hazelnut milkshake.”

He looks to Julie, about to point out that he’s already with a customer, but Julie just waves a hand at him and steps back. The same way Alex and Reggie do when they’re trying to hang out with him for as long as possible on his shift. His heart skips a bit.

He drags his eyes off Julie and focuses on the girl. “To-go cup?”

“No, I want to stay in and enjoy the décor.” The girl rolls her eyes at him.

Cool. She’s one of those. He grabs a blender. As he pours milk into it, he hears the girl say, “Oh, hey, Julie.”

He glances up in time to see Julie’s tense smile. “Hi, Carrie.”

Luke scoops chocolate hazelnut gelato into the blender.

“Great job in class today. The fact that you didn’t run out of the room crying was a real improvement, I think.”

He shoots his gaze to Julie, and she looks at him the way he suspects he was looking at her when she walked in on the smoothing debacle. He gives her a small sympathetic smile as he steps over to the soft serve machine to add vanilla ice cream to bulk out the shake. Julie raises an eyebrow at him and he shrugs.

“Of course, I do think it would be better if you actually, you know, _sang_ in vocal performance classes.”

Julie forces a sarcastic smile. “Hot tip.”

Luke slams the blender on its stand and turns it to the highest setting, filling the place with too much sound to talk. She shoots him a grateful smile.

When it’s done, he pours the milkshake into a cup, slaps on a lid, and drops it on the counter by the register with a regular drink straw. Carrie raises an eyebrow at it.

“Isn’t there a milkshake straw?” she asks as he rings her up on the register.

He nods at the empty jar that normally holds the milkshake straws. “Unfortunately, we’re all out at the moment.”

“This straw isn’t big enough.”

“I apologize for any inconvenience.” He smiles and whips the charge screen around to her. With an eye-roll, she taps her card on the scanner.

She shoots a smug look at Julie as she heads out the door. “See you in class.”

Julie just hums, irritated.

When the door closes behind Carrie, he pulls a fresh box of milkshake straws out from under the counter and starts adding them to the jar. Julie grins and slides over to the register.

“My hero.”

“I don’t have much power, except the straws. Main reason to not piss off your food service workers. We’ll fuck you up and you won’t ever know.”

She eyes the jar skeptically. “Because it’s a straw.”

He leans on the counter. “I guarantee she’ll have to pour that milkshake in a bowl and eat it with a spoon. And she’ll never know she could have had the right straw.”

A bright teasing smile spreads across her face. “You are truly diabolical.”

He grins up at her, and their smiles linger. A flirty reply is on the top of his tongue, but he’s on shift and he definitely shouldn’t keep flirting with her because he knows he has terrible self-control around this girl. Making out with her on top of the register would probably get him fired.

So he pushes away from the counter and heads back to the gelato counter. “Salted caramel, right? Cup or cone?”

She trails after him.

“Apparently not a cone?”

“Good call. You get more gelato with a cup anyways.”

“You really are full of trade secrets.”

“Stick with me, I’ll steer you away from the listeria and towards the bigger portions.”

He starts to scoop out some gelato, taking great pleasure in watching the smoothed gelato get unsmoothed.

“We’ve, uh, got another garage party on Saturday.” He tries for casual, not wanting to sound like he’s asking her out. But he’s not sure he’s succeeding, and he absolutely refuses to look at her to check.

“Yeah, Flynn mentioned.” 

Okay, so maybe Flynn didn’t totally hate him. Promising.

“You should show.”

“I should?”

He finally lets himself look at her, and she’s got this happy smile on her face and she’s biting her lip. For a moment, he has trouble breathing. If there wasn’t an entire counter of gelato between them, he would probably kiss her on impulse. “Mic’s always open for you.”

He plops the cup of gelato on the counter. She takes it.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing, Carrie paid for it.”

Julie laughs. “You really _are_ diabolical.”

“Yeah, could definitely get fired for that, so don’t tell anyone.” He goes to the sink to rinse off the smoother and returns to the counter to find that she’s still lingering.

Her gaze traces his face and she sighs. “I’m sorry you have to work here.”

“Eh, it’s not the worst job I’ve ever had. Second worst. But not the worst.” He grabs the tub of cotton candy gelato.

“Still. You deserve better.”

He starts trying to mimic the regional manager’s smoothing technique. “Pretty sure everyone deserves better than Listeria HQ.”

“Just sucks. You’re this amazing musician and you’re stuck at this job that’s beneath you.”

Normally he would have focused on the compliment. But the second half of her sentence sours him and he stops smoothing.

“I mean, it’s a job. No one’s too good for a job.”

She seems to realize she’s said something wrong, and tries to backtrack. “No, I get that. But you’re too good for this place, you know?”

Oh boy. “As opposed to people who _aren’t_ too good to work here?”

“I didn’t mean that. I just… the job’s demeaning, right?”

“I don’t feel demeaned. I work because I can’t live off Daddy’s money.” Maybe it’s kinda unfair—she definitely gives more of a middle-class vibe than the girl who used a laptop as an umbrella—and he doesn’t actually know her financial situation.

But guilt flashes across her face, which at least confirms that she’s not paying her own bills. “That’s—this isn’t coming out right.”

“Well, been lovely, Princess, but I’ve got a lot of gelato to demean myself with, so I’ll see you when I see you.”

He shoves away from the counter and goes to rinse off the smoother at the sink. He can hear her opening her mouth, trying to find the words, and, finally, finally, leave the shop.

* * *

The thing is, he knows what she was trying to say. There are times, like with the smoothing debacle, where being treated like he’s worthless because he doesn’t guess arbitrary corporate procedure right makes him feel about two inches tall. It’s not that the job is demeaning, but being demeaned for his performance of a fairly simple job that he usually does really well is pretty shit.

Receiving critiques on his songs and musicianship help him grow as an artist. Being treated like worthless scum because he doesn’t know what smoothing gelato means just makes him feel like… well, worthless scum.

He knows that she was basically trying to say that she didn’t like seeing him treated badly. But it still feels shitty to have her look at part of his reality and tell him it doesn’t belong there. And he’s not interested in compliments that are insults to other people.

So at the garage party, he tries to focus on the music. And yeah, maybe he’s winking at pretty people in the crowd more than he normally does. It’s crowd work, not pettiness.

He definitely doesn’t notice that she hasn’t shown up.

When they’re on a break, Alex raises an eyebrow at him. “Did something happen with Julie? Did you Luke it again?”

“I didn’t Luke it! She Luked it.” Luke realizes that that’s not the argument he wants to make. “… we are not turning my name into a verb!”

Reggie, sweet, wonderful Reggie, glances out at the crowd and says casually, “Oh, look. Willie’s here.”

Alex turns. “ _Who_ is—” He abruptly stops talking. Then he does an awkward wave and spins back to them. Luke and Reggie high five without looking at one another.

“I don’t know whether to say fuck you or thank you.”

“Thank you to me, fuck you to Luke,” Reggie explains.

“Cool.”

Luke grins. “Apparently it was really easy to get him to come. You’re welcome.”

He pats the drummer on the back and heads back to the mic.

Alex being a nervous mess about Willie’s presence is, in a way, really good for Luke because he finally has something to think about besides how hard he’s trying to convince himself that he’s not thinking about how Julie isn’t here.

By this point in the night, they’ve run through their original material and are now doing covers, so he suggests “Can’t You See” by FIDLAR. There’s something he’s always found sensual about the beats of the song, something that makes him feel… okay, don’t tell Alex, but it makes him feel hot. Honestly, he feels like all three of them become slightly hotter when they perform it. They always get a really good chemistry going on the stage and Willie should see Alex in his element like that and Luke… well, Luke wants to feel a little less crap.

He steps to the side as Alex opens with his drum solo, to make sure Willie can get a clear view of the drummer. (Let it never be said that Luke Patterson is not an excellent wingman).

Months later, he’ll look back on that performance and swear he remembers purple appearing at the edge of the crowd, but he doesn’t clock it at the moment.

Luke and Reggie start playing, but Luke nods to Alex to sing the first verse.

_Diamond rings help me sing  
Jesus Christ makes me nice_

Alex shakes his head at them during the Jesus lyric. Luke and Reggie laugh and start the backing vocals.

_And baby, can't you see  
That this is good for me?  
And baby, can't you see  
That this is what I need?_

Luke slides up to the mic, pressing in close to it as he takes over for the chorus. Alex has joked before that when Luke sings this song, he looks like he’s trying to fuck the mic. But he’s never told him to stop, and Luke suspects that it works with the vibe they’re going for with the song.

_Meditate, you can get rich quick  
Don't talk, just like my shit_

Luke quickly sweeps his sweaty hair back from his face and smirks to the crowd. He glances at Reggie, who laughs. Look, they all know this is the sex song. Lean into it, right?

_On the streets, yeah I feel so chic  
Sell the jeans that I bought last week, last week, last week_

At the jeans line, Luke rolls his hips.

_That was so last week  
Now I need a new thing, new thing, new thing  
Can I get your name?_

Luke makes eye contact with a girl standing in the front of the crowd and winks.

_I can do your thing_

Luke starts his guitar solo, stepping out toward the front of the garage, feeling all the eyes on him as he closes his own eyes, losing himself in the beats of the song and the feel of the strings under his fingers.

Reggie takes the second verse.

_Summertime helps me rhyme  
I’m gluten-free, it's killin' me_

Luke saunters over to Reggie, joining him at his mic to provide back-up vocals.

_And no need to pray  
I got nothin' to say  
And baby, I get paid  
'Cause I'm a DJ_

Luke jumps back to his mic for the chorus.

_Meditate, you can get rich quick  
Don't talk, just like my shit  
On the streets, yeah I feel so chic  
Sell the jeans that I bought last week, last week, last week  
That was so last week  
Now I need a new thing, new thing, new thing_

He opens his eyes, intending to wink at someone else in the crowd, only to see a determined Julie, dressed in a bright purple jumpsuit with a keyhole front, charge up to the garage. His mind falls out of his head a bit—both at the jumpsuit and at her sudden appearance—and he only manages to keep singing because they’ve played this song so many times that his body can go without him for a bit.

_Can I get your name?  
I can do your thing_

She rushes right past him, without acknowledging him, and reaches the piano just in time for the bridge. She starts to play.

For a second, his brain short-circuits. If he’d thought about it, he would have assumed she played piano, but he hasn’t seen it.

And he’s never seen her enter the stage before with such little hesitation.

She’s performing. That’s her apology.

It takes him a moment to remember what to do with the guitar in his hands. They don’t normally have a keyboardist, so they’ve adapted the bridge so that he plays the piano part on his guitar. He struggles to remember the original guitar part, and comes in only just in time.

As her piano and his guitar play off one another, he finds himself drifting towards her, as if their instruments are having a conversation, as if they’re pulling their people together. Something about the coupling of the instruments feels more intimate to him than sex.

She meets his gaze and flashes him a small apologetic smile.

He just nods and leaps back to the mic to finish the last chorus. But this time, his heart is pounding, not just from performing, and there’s a tingling in his chest. He’s hyperaware of her behind him, of the possibility of her eyes on him, and he feels short of breath. He can only hope it’s not getting in the way of his performance.

He spins his guitar behind his back.

_Meditate, you can get rich quick  
Don't talk, just like my shit  
On the streets, yeah I feel so chic_

He swings his guitar back into his hands to play again. Behind him, he can hear Alex, Reggie, and Julie backing him with the “ohs.”

_Sell the jeans that I bought last week, last week, last week  
That was so last week  
Now I need a new thing, new thing, new thing  
Can I get your name?  
I can do your thing_

When he’s done singing, he makes his way over to Reggie (determinedly trying not to look at Julie), rocking out with his bassist as they shred out the end of the song. 

As the crowd dissolves into cheers, he tries not to wonder too much about what she thinks of seeing him in his element. It’s not his song, but performing like this… this is his soul. And an embarrassingly large part of him needs to know if she approves.

He leans into Reggie’s mic. “Let's hear it for Julie Molina on the keys!”

There’s another round of applause. He steps back from the mic, still unable to look at her directly. He can sense her getting off the bench and approaching him, but Reggie smacks his arm. “Willie! Come meet the band!” And Luke gets pulled into forcing Alex to interact with his crush.

* * *

It’s another hour before Luke manages to break free of the crowd. The girl he winked at tried to talk to him, and he was left with the awkward situation of trying to be polite without openly rejecting her.

It had seemed very possible that he could have hooked up with her tonight… until Julie showed up. Now, even though he’s still not really looking at her—he doesn’t want her to know how desperately he wants to talk to her—he’s hyperaware of where she is in the backyard and his heart rate keeps randomly spiking at just the thought of her approaching him.

He pulls away from the heat of the crowd and heads to the alleyway behind the garage. He glances back over his shoulder and meets Julie’s gaze. Nodding into the alleyway, he ducks into their hiding place.

He’s barely gotten himself leaned against the garage when she appears. He’s struck by how much it’s a mirror image of the last garage party.

She smiles, nervous. “You’ve got a lot of admirers out there.”

He laughs. It’s not something he’s paid attention to. “Do I?”

She looks up at him, like she’s about to say something, but she sees something on his face that he thought he was hiding.

“Are you okay?”

Nope. Today was the Monthly Call with his parents, and his mom sounded more desperate for him to come home. This week turned very quickly from promising to thoroughly shit.

“Been a week” is all he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

But she raises an eyebrow, unconvinced. “I said some pretty shit things and you were right to call me out.”

“Are you thanking me for calling you out?”

“Helping me check my privilege. Unlike you, I’m invested in my personal growth.”

Reluctantly, his lips curve upwards. How is he supposed to stay mad when she’s offering him that sweet smile?

“Interesting apology tactic where you insult me.”

“I’ve got to keep your head from getting too big.” She grins, then turns more serious. “What I meant to say was, I wish you were getting paid obscene amounts of money to do the thing you love that you’re so amazing at instead of getting paid not enough money to be treated like shit over something you don’t care about.”

“I knew you meant that.”

“But I didn’t say that and instead I said elitist bullshit that I regret.”

He doesn’t really know what to do with the awkwardness of her apologetic tone, so he focuses on the important part of what she’s said.

“You think I’m amazing at that?” He gestures to the garage, surprised by how shy his voice sounds.

“You’re really incredible. All of you, but… you’re my favorite.”

For a moment, he can’t breathe because she likes the most important part of him, the part his parents don’t even see. “Thanks.” He hopes she can feel all the weight of that thanks because he doesn’t know how to put it into words.

She leans against the garage next to him. “You know what I was thinking when you started playing FIDLAR?”

“This guy only knows one band?”

She laughs. “I always thought that song was hot. Not lyrically, but just something about the beats and the vocals and the… you know?” He nods. “And then I saw FIDLAR perform it live and they were so flat and low energy and it kind of killed the sexiness of it. Seeing you do it, I remembered. It’s a weirdly hot song.” Her eyes linger on him, heated.

If she’s saying that watching him perform makes her hot, he may actually implode. 

“Glad I could renew your horniness for FIDLAR.” He leans closer to her, injecting snark into a whisper. “You know, none of that was an apology.”

Recognizing the echo of what she said last time, she shakes her head. She puts her hands on her heart and imitates his voice. “I’m sorry. You are a human wrecking ball, and I throw myself at your feet.”

He eyes her up and down, letting a smirk play at the corner of his mouth. “Yet you remain standing.”

She licks her lips. “I don’t need to be.”

Seriously, he’s going to implode. They’re going to find tiny bits of Luke behind the garage and the police will be confused about what happened and Alex will just shake his head and say, “He lacked the emotional capacity to handle how much he liked this girl.”

He clears his throat, trying to stay calm. “Only if you want to.”

She leans in close, letting her eyes linger on his mouth. “Assume I’ve been wanting to since you started playing that song.”

Seriously. Bits of Luke. 

“Yeah, okay, just let me…” He shrugs out of his flannel and lays it on the ground. She looks confused for a second. “For your knees.”

Her gaze turns soft and delighted, as if he’s offered her a bouquet of flowers rather than asked her to blow him. There’s a sweetness to her smile and he’s suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to kiss her. Not with passion or rage. Just a sweet kiss between two people who could be moving towards something. The kind of kiss that starts to convert a hookup into a relationship.

He leans forward, but she ducks her head and reaches for his zipper. “I’ve got better things to do with my mouth,” she insists. She makes it sound sultry, but he feels totally wrong-footed, like he’s missing something, like she’s holding herself at a distance with armor he doesn’t recognize.

Before she can drop to her knees, he groans. As much as he wants her mouth around him, he can’t stand the idea of not getting to reciprocate. “Wait. I kinda want to be inside you.”

“… you will be.”

“Right, but… you know.”

“Next time?”

He grins at the promise of a next time and runs a hand gently over her curls.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The laptop umbrella is an actual thing that essentially became a meme (Rain at USC), so I had to nod to it.
> 
> While I was writing the endless gelato scene, I was remembering my time working food service at the Wizarding World theme park, and now I want to write a fluffy Jukebox AU there:  
> -Luke _knowing_ the lore and always interacting with kids as if the WW is real and it positively melting Julie  
> -Juke working the Butterbeer cart where the Frog Choir performs and memorizing all the songs—Luke tries to turn this into flirting  
> -Alex pouting because Willie always works the register and he can’t work-flirt with him (because Alex is terrified to work register)  
> -Julie getting assigned to the highest-pressure role in the Three Brooms on a holiday lunch rush and Luke saying “I wouldn’t have assigned you to expo if I didn’t think you were going to rock it” and then them crushing it by working as a seamless team  
> Just… Jukebox + the band working food service at the Wizarding World. That’s it. That’s the tweet. Just want you all to know how my mind works. (This has now been written and is available [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27500788)!)
> 
> Songs/musical references in this chapter:  
> • "Can't You See" by FIDLAR


	4. Oh No, We Both Have Broken Hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Four Days Straight" by Scattered Trees
> 
> Fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fQCo2E0xEAeYDO9pk8jYu?si=ZJd75ocxT-GSagauI2tmVg)

Luke and Julie run into each other at a party a couple days later. He only gets twenty minutes to wonder if she meant what she said at the garage party before she’s taking his hand and tugging him into the empty laundry room.

And so it goes. They run into each other at open mics, at house parties, at Sunset Curve’s weekly garage parties, even at a couple gigs (because of course they have similar taste in music and of course it’s killing him slowly.) Every time it’s like there are magnets drawing them together. They start to learn how to work each other’s bodies, pulling pleasure from one another faster and harder, and somehow months accumulate and he realizes he’s memorized what her face looks like when she lets go.

They don’t really kiss. Sometimes to swallow a sound, but that’s it. That seems to be a line she’s drawn since their gelato argument and he doesn’t have the courage to ask about it. They also never make it to a bed, because their hookups only happen if they run into each other somewhere. He doesn’t even have her number. And because of the semi-public nature of all their hookups, they’ve never been completely naked with one another. He knows what every inch of her feels like, but not what she looks like.

He wishes, in a way and to a depth he didn’t know he could wish, that things were different, that he could slide them sideways into relationship territory. But her avoidance of kisses and the walls that she puts up whenever a conversation veers towards discussing whatever they’re doing makes it clear that that’s not on the table. So he takes what he can get, and realizes every time he sees her that he’s more gone on her than he was the last time.

Honestly, it’s kinda becoming a problem because he’s starting to associate Sunset Curve performances with hooking up with Julie, and that’s just not a helpful association.

So his mind is already kinda in a haze when they enter the green room for another open mic night and he sees Julie there. She shoots him a heated look and his mind is completely off music when Reggie sprints in and yells, “Luke, your parents are here!”

The whole green room stares at them, and it takes a moment for his mind to catch up. “What?”

He’s aware of Julie’s gaze on him, and that’s not something he wants. She’s erected walls, so he’s erected walls. Neither of them talks about their parents.

He staggers back to sit on the counter, trying to make sense of it. “How… what?”

“I tweeted about it from the Sunset Curve Twitter. Maybe they follow us on social media?” Reggie suggests.

Honestly, the idea of his parents on Twitter is almost more confusing than them being here. “But why would they come?”

Alex and Reggie can only shrug. This is the wrong group of people to figure out why parents do things.

Julie appears beside them. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, of course.” 

She reaches out a hand and put it on his. For a second, he thinks she’s trying to comfort him and then he realizes that he’s been twisting one of the tuning keys on his guitar. The string now lays slack.

“Shit.” He starts retuning, but he can almost feel the band exchanging looks over his head. “I’m fine,” he insists, a bit too loudly.

“Can I play with you guys again?”

He looks at Julie sharply. She ends up performing with them every time she comes to open mics because she’s not yet been able to take the stage by herself. But she never asks. One of the guys always offers. So he knows she’s not asking for herself.

“I’m fine,” he repeats.

“Well, I’m not. So what are we singing?”

Reggie pulls up the notes app on his phone. After the fourth open mic night with Julie, the bassist had come up with a list of covers he thought they’d be able to incorporate her into, so they always have an easy list of songs to pull from.

It makes some part of Luke unbearably warm that his friends were so immediately and unquestionably Team Julie.

He is also very aware of the fact that she never sings Sunset Curve originals with them. Alex and Reggie have both raised the idea of her joining the band multiple times, but Alex is always quick to point out that, if she joins the band, Luke should stop hooking up with her. So he’s been delaying what he suspects is probably inevitable, trying to enjoy as much time with her as possible. 

Reggie reads from his list. “Okay, so we have ‘No Sleep Tonight,’ ‘I Want You To Want Me,’ ‘Sex On Fire,’ ‘Get Off’… wait, no, sorry. This is Alex’s no-fly list.”

“His what?” Julie asks.

“A list of songs I’m not comfortable performing with the whole band.” Alex replies tactfully.

Luke doesn’t know whether Julie thought the guys didn’t know, but based on her face, she knows now.

“Actually, that’s an idea.” Luke says. “The no-fly list.”

“Do I need to remind you what ‘no-fly’ means?”

“You want me to not be focused on my parents. I will not be thinking about my parents if we play ‘Get Off.’”

He feels a rush of defiance. Fuck it, they came without giving him notice. They don’t get the kindness of an appropriate song.

Julie darts a quick look at him. “I don’t know that I’m comfortable singing that in front of your parents.”

“Why not?”

She raises an eyebrow and Alex sighs heavily. Almost synchronized, Julie, Reggie, and Alex sing, “ _All I want to do is get off._ ”

Alex glances at the list. “I’m willing to compromise on ‘I Want You to Want Me.’ But there will be no humping on stage. My poor gay heart can’t take that.”

They all look at Luke. He wants to insist that he’s fine, that he doesn’t need a babysitter. But he feels like his insides have been put through a blender, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stay intact if he takes that mic without someone by his side. Is this how Julie feels every time she tries to take the stage? 

Julie steps closer, snagging his gaze. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

He doesn’t know how to explain that it won’t be. From what she says about her family, he gathers that they’re an incredibly supportive bunch who would definitely be at every open mic she does if she was comfortable having people she knew there.

Playing in front of his parents is offering up his musician’s soul yet again, and risking them rejecting it for the thousandth time.

She squeezes his hand. “Don’t worry about what’s going on out there. Just be here with us.”

He smiles at her hand, unable to look at her. “Okay.”

* * *

By the time they’re filing onto the stage, he’s genuinely nauseous. The other three take their places and look to Luke, waiting for him to start.

He finds his parents’ anxious face in the crowd, and thinks he may make an audible gulp.

They start to play, but he immediately feels like he’s left his voice back in the green room.

He glances at Julie, but she’s already there singing, knowing what he needs.

_I want you to want me  
I need you to need me_

Clocking the nerves on his face, she starts dancing over to him.

_I'd love you to love me_

Oh. He had… really not remembered that that was a lyric. He can see Julie struggling with it—trying to perform it for the audience but not for him.

_I'm begging you to beg me_

She shoots him a smirk at the end of that line, and he finds a bit of their flirty performing energy returning to him. She leans into his mic and they sing the next bit together.

_I want you to want me  
I need you to need me  
I'd love you to love me_

Refusing to linger on the line, Julie immediately pulls away and starts dancing in the middle of the stage, belting out the pre-chorus. 

_I'll shine up my old brown shoes  
I'll put on a brand new shirt  
I'll get home early from work  
If you say that you love me_

She dances towards him as she starts the chorus.

_Didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?_

She turns to Alex. He nods, as if she was actually asking the question.

_Oh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?_

She dances over to Reggie and he dances right back, grinning at her.

_Feeling all alone without a friend you know you feel like dying  
Oh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?_

Then she nods to Luke, encouraging him to sing. He leans into his mic and takes the next verse.

_I want you to want me  
I need you to need me  
I'd love you to love me_

He knows what the performance demands, and he lets his gaze linger gently on her during the last line. A soft smile spreads over her face, but he can tell it’s her performance face, not her real face. Underneath that performance, he can see those walls she keeps up.

_I'm begging you to beg me_

_I'll shine up my old brown shoes  
I'll put on a brand new shirt  
I'll get home early from work  
If you say that you love me_

Julie rushes over to him, and he follows her around the stage singing into the mic she holds out to him. 

_Didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?  
Oh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?  
Feeling all alone without a friend you know you feel like dying  
Oh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?_

“ _Hey!_ ” she yells.

He rips out the first half of his guitar solo. She grins, a genuine grin like she always does when he really lets loose on the guitar, and he finally feels a real smile swoop over his face.

She takes the bridge.

_Feeling all alone without a friend you know you feel like dying  
Oh, didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you crying?_

He rips out the second half of his guitar solo, then jumps in close to join her at her mic so they can sing the rest of the song to one another.

_I want you to want me  
I need you to need me  
I'd love you to love me  
I'm begging you to beg me_

For a moment, he lets himself enjoy the fact that her face is reflecting back the joy and longing he knows is on his face. She doesn’t mean it, but for thirty seconds on a crappy night, he lets himself pretend.

_I want you to want me  
I want you to want me  
I want you to want me  
I want you to want me_

As the last sound of his guitar rings through the venue, she raises an eyebrow at him, checking in.

“How was that?”

“I still think it should have been ‘Get Off.’”

She smacks his arm playfully and turns him to the crowd for a bow.

* * *

He hoped he would get more time to prepare, but as soon as he steps out of the green room with the band, there are his parents.

“Hi, Luke.” His mom smiles tensely.

He nods. “Hey.”

Behind him, Reggie says, “Hey!” in an overly cheerful manner. He can hear what sounds like Alex smacking Reggie on the arm before adding his own “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Patterson.”

His dad nods awkwardly. “Nice job tonight, all of you.”

Nice. What a compliment, Mitch.

There’s a long silence, and then his mom turns her gaze to Julie, overly friendly. “Luke, you didn’t tell me you had a girlfriend.”

He would be okay with vanishing right now. That would be cool.

“Um… nah, this is Julie. She’s… Julie.”

Alex takes pity on him. “She performs with us sometimes. We’re trying to lure her into the band.”

“Oh, how nice.” His mom clearly doesn’t know what to say. His father offers his hand and Julie stiffly shakes hands with both of his parents.

God, could this get any more awkward?

“What do you do, Julie?” his dad asks.

Oh, right. Of course it could.

“I’m a student at USC.”

Everyone but Julie freezes. Confused, she sweeps her gaze over the band, as if trying to find the final pieces of the puzzle.

His mother giggles nervously. “Mitch and I were Trojans. We met there, in fact.” She holds up her pointer and middle fingers in the USC "V" for victory.

Julie’s mouth falls open a bit. She’s never asked about it again, but he knows she’s been trying to solve the mystery of his hatred of USC. This, apparently, she hadn’t anticipated.

“Oh.” On a delay, she does the standard reply to the V. “Fight on.”

It’s a weirdly concrete reminder that Julie _is_ a USC student. Technically, he knows that, but he often forgets because she doesn’t like to talk about it around him and because she doesn’t fit into his stereotypes of USC. Or when she does, he doesn’t… hate it as much as he expects to.

Like the time a week ago when he briefly ran into a drunk Julie while she was tailgating for the USC-UCLA game, and she was dancing triumphantly in his face, loudly singing “Tusk” and it was this perfect distillation of both Julie and USC and...

Look, he’s not saying he’s changing his mind about USC. But it was the first time in two years that he hasn’t minded seeing someone dressed from head-to-toe in Trojan crimson and gold.

“What do you study?” his mom asks.

“Voice.”

Now it’s his mom’s turn to say “Oh.”

There’s another awkward beat, and Luke can’t help himself.

“You guys have heard of the USC music school, right? They only let in the best of the best. She’s the best.”

Alex prods him pointedly in the back, but he’s said what he said and his parents fall deathly quiet.

His mother struggles to speak. “We just realized it’s been a while since we heard you play—”

“Yeah, when was that? Middle school?”

“Luke—”

Reggie, once again the hero, pulls out his phone. “Oh, actually, our Uber is here, so we have to go. But it was great seeing you, Mr. and Mrs. Patterson.”

Alex and Reggie wave and immediately file out.

His parents try to make eye contact with him, but he just nods in their general direction and heads to the door.

He hears Julie mumble a “Nice to meet you” before rushing after him. He feels her hand slip into his, and it’s basically the only good thing about the night.

* * *

Julie’s sitting in the passenger seat of his car, the seat shoved all the way back to make room for him to sit on the floor. His head is deep between her thighs when she says, “Your parents.”

He yanks back like she’s on fire. “Seriously? Now?”

“Sorry, I’m thinking.”

“Then clearly I’m doing something wrong.”

She smiles and reaches down to run her fingers through his hair for a moment. “Just let me go on this thought journey and then I’m here with you.”

He rests his chin on her knee.

“You got into USC, didn’t you?”

He nods.

“Into the guitar program?”

He nods again.

“And they didn’t let you go?”

“They said I could go to USC. Just not to Thornton.”

“Where did they want you to go?”

“Viterbi.”

She bursts out laughing.

He tries to pout. “Hey, only I can laugh at that. You laughing at that is mean.”

“I’m just failing to picture you as an engineer.”

He kisses the inside of her knee. “I wasn’t the worst at math.” He lets a beat of silence play out. “Reggie was the worst. I was the second worst.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m okay with not being great at math.”

“Luke. You know what I mean.”

He pauses for a second, and nods.

“It mostly just sucks cause… I was supposed to be the fourth generation in this Trojan legacy. And there were, like, a million valid things that could have happened that would have broken that, you know? Like if I didn’t get in, or we couldn’t afford it, or it wasn’t the right place for me. But… this didn’t feel valid. Felt like I got raised to believe that this one school would be the ticket to my happiness and success and my worth as a musician, and then, surprise, you can’t go.” He meets her gaze and forces a shrug. “It’s a very privileged problem to have.”

“It stills sucks. And I’m sorry.”

He shrugs again. “Everyone’s got shit, right?”

She nods. “And at least you’re a musician.”

“What do you mean?”

She looks to the ceiling for a moment to collect her thoughts. “Do you know AJR?”

He rests his elbows on her knees and rests his chin on his folded hands. “The ‘Come Hang Out’ guys?”

She nods. “You know ‘100 Bad Days?’”

“ _Maybe a hundred bad days made a hundred good stories_?” he sings.

“ _A hundred good stories make me interesting at parties._ It’s that, right? Obviously it would have been better if your parents were just supportive and your relationship with them was healthy, but…” She trails off, as if uncomfortable shit-talking his parents.

“They weren’t,” he supplies.

“And it’s awful, and I’m sure it was formative in all sorts of painful ways, but you can write about it and then sing about it, and you can reach people who know that feeling and you can move them. Like you said, everyone’s got shit. Being an artist means you can do something with it.” She reaches out her hand and strokes his cheek. “That’s why I wish I could write again. Or at least sing the way I used to. That’s what my mom would want.”

He puts his hand over hers.

“You will. When you’re ready.” He doesn’t know a lot, but he knows Julie Molina will be a musician like he knows the sky is blue.

She goes silent for a moment. “They’re talking about kicking me out.”

He jerks back. “What?”

“Not kicking me out, I guess. But I might fail a performance class. So I’d have to retake that, and that just messes up the whole four year plan.” She pauses. “They’ve been really flexible so far, because it looks bad for them if they make it so a grieving student doesn’t graduate, but…”

He kisses her knee again. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I mentioned the open mic night thing to my instructor. She said they could possibly count it as some sort of assessment? But it couldn’t be…”

“‘Get Off?’”

Her lips twist into a sad smile.

He meets her gaze. “Would you have to be alone up there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What if you and me did something? Duet, ballad thing, to make use of your voice.” Which he’s still not heard and desperately wants to.

“You’d do that?”

“Course.” He tries to steer away from the intensity of her gaze. “It’s not a hardship to perform with the Thornton Princess. You make me look good.”

He’s trying to tease her, but she gives him the softest smile in response. “I think we make each other look good.”

If he wasn’t cramped up in a ball under the dashboard of the car, he thinks he would kiss her.

But she diffuses the tension. “Sorry, I really killed the mood.”

“No worries. What do you say we go to the Sprinkles ATM, get some cupcakes, then figure out some song to sing?”

“Sounds perfect.”

* * *

On the drive back, they debate between a few songs, ultimately narrowing it down to a Chelsea Cutler collab.

But when they’re trying to pick from the shortlist, he finally hears her voice in its element for the first time.

He’s glad they were stopped at a red light at the time because he genuinely forgets how to drive for a few moments when she first tests out some of “you were good to me.”

Her voice fades as she sees his face. “Are you okay?”

He tries to remember how to breathe. “Just regretting every song choice we made on stage. We’ve been burying that voice.”

“It’s like you said the first time. I needed to bury for a while.”

“Well, I go back to my initial statement. You are incredible.”

“Thanks,” she whispers softly.

But her voice, incredible as it is, isn’t the whole reason he almost reboots when he hears it.

His writer brain, his damn writer brain, immediately starts filling the half-written songs in his notebook, the ones that felt like they were missing something, with her voice. It belongs there. Her voice belongs in the band.

And he knows what that means.

* * *

The small favor is that he manages to convince her that “Crying Over You” will be a better choice than “you were good to me.” The mournful, post-break up lyrics of the latter are a little too in line with how he’s feeling and they might actually make him cry on stage, which he thinks might give away how he feels about her. “Crying Over You” has some moments that hit a bit close to home, but it’s mostly unrelated to their relationship and he thinks, ironically, that he’ll be better able to make it through the song without crying.

Still, he isn’t fully prepared for how it feels when they step on the stage for the open mic, her sitting behind her keyboard and him sitting with his guitar on the bench next to her.

Because she takes the stage with ease now, after months of struggle, and he knows that that’s because she still needs people by her side.

She needs the band.

And they need her.

He starts playing and she begins to sing.

_You don't, you don't care like you used to  
You don't want me there like you used to_

Part of his heart feels like it’s being wrenched off, and he’s not sure whether her voice or the lyrics or the combination.

_I keep wasting every night waitin' for you to say goodbye_

There is a deeply melodramatic part of him that wants to tell her that she’ll be waiting forever if she wants him to say goodbye. He swallows the impulse.

_But if you won't, you won't, I'll make the first move_

She begins playing, and he enjoys the sounds of her piano weaving into the sounds of his guitar.

_I choose cryin' over you  
I choose silence over being lied to  
I choose drinkin' alone, drownin' in my tears in my bedroom  
'Cause it'll make me happier than you do  
I choose crying over you_

A heartbreaking look spreads over her face, the pain needed to sell the performance. But he can see the bliss under it. She’s singing again. _She’s singing again_ , and it brings her to life. No hookup is more important than that.

He sings the second verse, hoping his voice isn’t too choked up.

_You know, you know just how to get me  
How to take my love and use it against me  
I keep wastin' all my time tryin' to make the wrong things right  
I hope you like your bed when it's empty_

He definitely doesn’t think about how they’ve never made it to a bed.

_'Cause I choose cryin' over you  
I choose silence over being lied to  
I choose drinkin' alone, drowning in my tears in my bedroom  
'Cause it'll make me happier than you do_

Her voice joins his and his heart breaks yet again. Their voices blend so well, like they were made to sing together.

_I choose cryin' over you_

She takes over her part of the chorus, glancing at him briefly.

_Yeah  
I choose cryin' over you_

He takes the “ _Yeah, yeah_.”

They’ve finally reached the bridge, and their eyes meet as they sing together. He shifts closer to her, letting his yearning bleed into the performance. He can be honest, and she can just think he’s a good performer.

_The truth is  
I'll only get over you if_

She sings her line.

_I choose cryin' over you_

And he sings his.

_I choose silence over being lied to_

And their voices meld again.

_I choose drinkin' alone, drownin' in my tears in my bedroom  
'Cause it'll make me happier than you do  
I choose cryin' over you_

Their faces are very close as they finish, but it’s not the tension-laden closeness they normally have. At least not on his end. He doubts she realizes the thoughts that have been tumbling through his head for the past week, so he suspects it’s one sided, but for him, this feels like a moment of mourning.

The crowd erupts into cheers, but he barely hears it, even when he gets to his feet and faces them for bows.

* * *

Maybe he’s selfish, but he lets himself be with her one last time.

They’re in his car, and she’s just ridden him in the front seat. He’s still inside her, and their ragged breaths fill the silence, and the glass is slightly fogged, and he hears a voice, which is apparently his, say, “You should join the band.”

“I’d love that.” She doesn’t pull back to look at him, and that feels significant somehow, even though he doesn’t know why. “I guess… we probably shouldn’t do this anymore then.”

He nods, then realizes she can’t see the nod. “First rule of band: don’t fuck the band.”

There’s a long silence. He tries to memorize the feel of her, not just her warmth, but her hair in his face, her soft cheek resting against his, her intangible Julie-ness in his space.

She still doesn’t look at him as she whispers “Okay.”

* * *

Luke slumps into the house, not expecting anyone to still be up. But Reggie and Alex are curled up on the couch watching _She-Ra_. As soon as Reggie sees Luke’s face, he pauses the show and gets up.

“Luke, are you okay?”

Alex gets up too, equally concerned.

Luke tucks his hands in his pockets. “Julie’s joining the band.”

“Are you sure?” Alex asks.

“You saw us tonight. We need her, and she needs us.”

Hesitantly, Alex asks, “So did you…?”

“We were never anything. And now we’re bandmates.”

Reggie repeats himself, insistent. “But are you okay?”

Luke doesn’t know if it’s the intensity of the night’s performance, or the emotions of… whatever you call what happened in the car, but he feels like crying. He can only nod, not trusting his voice to sustain the lie. “I’m gonna go write.”

The guys definitely don’t buy it, but they let him go. 

As soon as he gets in his room, he grabs his song journal like a lifeline. But as he tries to put pencil to paper, he knows he doesn’t know what to write about Julie yet. It’s too raw, too present. Not now, not while he’s still got her scent on his skin. He needs to deal with some of his pain, and it can’t be about Julie.

So he starts a new song: “Unsaid Emily.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We were so close to living in an AU where they sang "Get Off," but I decided that that was a bit much, even for me.
> 
> Songs/musical references in this chapter:  
> • "No Sleep Tonight" by The Faders  
> • "I Want You to Want Me" by Cheap Trick (though I was thinking more about the Letters to Cleo version for their performance)  
> • "Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon  
> • "Get Off" by the Dandy Warhols  
> • "Tusk" by Fleetwood Mac (At USC-UCLA games (at least Back in My Day), we would sing a version of this that includes "UCLA sucks," and I'm incapable of hearing that song to this day without singing that line or doing the series of hand gestures that we did along with it. Where did I learn my subtlety? I got it from my alma mater.)  
> • AJR: "Come Hang Out," "100 Bad Days"  
> • "you were good to me" by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler  
> • "Crying Over You" by The Band CAMINO and Chelsea Cutler


	5. Whatever Happened To Communication, Conversation?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Good Times Are Over" by FIDLAR
> 
> Fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fQCo2E0xEAeYDO9pk8jYu?si=ZJd75ocxT-GSagauI2tmVg)

There are definite benefits to the shift in Luke and Julie’s relationship.

  1. He has her number now, so instead of just hoping he runs into her somewhere, he can text her whenever he wants and she usually replies almost immediately.
  2. They write together, and it turns out that she’s the perfect writing partner for him, operating on a similar wavelength while bringing in a different perspective and knowledge set. Everything they write feels elevated from what they could write on their own.
  3. They hang out constantly for rehearsal, and sometimes she even comes to the gelato shop, sits at the table closest to the register, buys a bunch of milkshakes (which he makes only with gelato), and they write songs over the counter when he’s not with customers.
  4. She sneaks him into Thornton’s 24/7 soundproof practice rooms at University Gateway. At the house, the neighbors only let them play until 10 pm (pretty ungrateful considering they’re getting to listen to the greatest band ever for free), but in the Gateway practice rooms, he and Julie can jam through the middle of the night without repercussions.



The problem is that all those benefits are also terrible because now he’s confirmed that she’s amazing and he’s around her amazingness almost constantly.

He realizes that he’d somehow managed to convince himself that part of the reason he was so into her when they were hooking up was that she was, ultimately, a peripheral figure in his life and he just didn’t see her enough to know all the things about her that he would dislike.

Now he knows: nope, he’s just into her.

Sometimes there’s an awkwardness that lingers around their interactions. Like when they write lyrics that dip into romance and he worries that she’ll know if he’s talking about her. And like the times when she reveals something in passing and he wants to unpack it more fully but knows he can’t without catapulting them into awkward territory.

Like with PlayerGate.

A month into Julie joining the band, they’re on a break from rehearsing, and Reggie makes a passing reference to Bobby’s train wreck of a love life.

“Who’s Bobby?” Julie asks.

“Oh, just this dick we went to high school with. He was a major player,” Luke explains.

She quirks an eyebrow at him. “Bit hypocritical, isn’t it?”

“How’s that?”

“… cause you’re a player?”

Alex and Reggie immediately dissolve into hysterical cackles. Luke feels like he just stuck his finger in a live toaster.

Confused, Julie glances around the garage. “What’s so funny?”

Luke really doesn’t know what to say, because the simplest explanation is “I’ve only had sex with one person for the past eight months,” but that’s really not something he’s going to say.

Alex and Reggie start slapping one another in an effort to calm themselves down. “To be fair,” Alex forces out when he gets his breathing under control enough to form words. “If I didn’t know you, I would probably think you were a player.”

“Yeah, like, he’s got fuckboy energy without being a fuckboy.” Reggie nods.

Luke’s jaw drops. “What? Do I act like a fuckboy? Friends tell friends if they act like fuckboys!”

“No, no.” Alex calms himself down. “But if I met you at a party, I’d probably _think_ you were a fuckboy. It’s just a… vibe.”

“What vibe?? Where is it coming from??”

“The shirts?” Reggie suggests.

“The bouncy walk,” Julie adds.

“There’s just something intangible,” Alex summarizes.

Luke can only stare at them, horrified. Luckily Reggie jumps in to correct Julie. “But, yeah, Luke’s not a fuckboy or a player. Scout's honor.”

“Oh.” Her voice lands heavily on the “oh,” and he desperately wants to ask her about it: why she thought he was a player, and why it seems to have mattered so much. Because she seems discombobulated beyond what the situation warrants.

At the end of rehearsal, he catches her before she leaves.

He tries to figure out the least awkward way to phrase this. “Did I do something when… to make you feel uncomfortable or disrespected or something?”

“No!” She winces at the loudness of her voice. “No, I just… misinterpreted some stuff.” But she won’t meet his gaze.

“Are we okay?” he asks quietly.

“Yeah, we’re great.” She finally meets his eyes and smiles. Only then does he really clock how close they’re standing.

“Okay, cool.” He thinks he says that. His head sometimes goes fuzzy when she’s looking at him from that close.

But as she awkwardly slips away, he can’t shake the feeling that something massive has happened, and he has absolutely no idea what.

* * *

For the first couple months that she’s in the band, the guys tiptoe around what Reggie terms “the Jukebox” of it all. But after that, they start being less delicate.

Like the time when Flynn is sitting in on their rehearsal and, as soon as they go on break, she shoves her phone in Julie’s face.

Julie reads a text out, dubious. “‘Julie’s cool’?”

“Direct quote from Nick.” Flynn says, as if announcing that Julie’s been shortlisted for a Grammy nomination.

At the sound of the name, Luke sits up. Later, Reggie will tell him he looked like a meercat popping up to check for predators. Luke feels strongly that he was actually very casual.

“Okay?” Julie shrugs and heads back to her piano.

Flynn follows her. “Jules, this is big.”

“Not really? ‘Julie’s cool’ is barely a compliment, and I liked Nick at the beginning of freshman year when there was nothing else to do. I’ve grown.”

Alex cuts in sarcastically, “Yeah, Flynn. She’s a sophomore now.” Julie tosses him a playful middle finger.

Luke absolutely should not participate in this conversation or try to find out anything about Nick, so naturally he asks, “Who’s Nick?”

Flynn raises an unimpressed eyebrow, like she’s analyzing everything about him in that moment and finding him extremely underwhelming. He gets the sense that she’s never really forgiven him for how he reacted to Julie when they first met. Which is… probably fair. He doesn’t know that he would forgive anyone who talked to Reggie or Alex that way. “He’s a guitarist in our year.”

Of course he’s a guitarist. Of. Fucking. Course.

Flynn spins back to Julie. “‘She’s cool’ is how cool guys express interest.”

Julie raises an eyebrow at the guys. “Care to weigh in?”

“I would like to exclude myself from the narrative of cool guys.” Alex plops behind his drums. “Ask Reggie.”

Reggie shakes his head. “I like to be direct about my feelings. Life is short.”

“What about you?” Julie asks Luke.

He holds up his hands. “I would also like to be excluded from this narrative.”

But Reggie taps his chin thoughtfully. “Luke would use much more enthusiastic adjectives. Like ‘he’s fantastic’ or ‘she’s incredible.’”

Luke wishes very much that he could just hide inside his guitar in that moment. There’s no way she’s forgotten how many times he’s called her incredible. He can’t even try to convince himself that she hasn’t made the connection, because she’s gone completely still.

Refusing to meet her eyes, he glances in her general direction. “In conclusion, we’re not impressed with Nick the guitarist.”

“Oh, really?” she asks, her voice turning dangerously playful.

Flynn shoots him a dirty look. “You don’t know him.”

“Well, I know he’s a classical guitarist, so he holds his guitar weirdly.”

He can sense Julie’s exasperation, even if he doesn’t look up to see it. Then he hears her begin playing something softly on the piano. It takes him a moment, but then he remembers the song name.

It’s John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.”

“What do you want me to say to Nick?” Flynn asks her.

Luke wants to prove that he’s not jealous, so he cuts in. “Tell him he holds his guitar weirdly.”

Nailed it.

Alex begins drumming along to Julie’s playing. The absolute traitor. Luke shoots him an annoyed look, but Alex shrugs, unapologetic. 

Julie glares at Luke. “They hold it that way to get easier access to the higher positions on the neck.”

“Sure, but it looks a bit embarrassing, doesn’t it?”

Reggie begins to whistle the bridge of “Jealous Guy.”

Confused by the spontaneous musical performance happening around her, Flynn looks to Luke, somehow identifying him as the person who makes the most sense in this situation. “… what’s going on?”

“They’re mocking me.” Luke explains as he pops to his feet. “Luckily, I’ve got work, so I’m out.”

Technically, he’s not lying, but he doesn’t have work for another two hours. And the lie doesn’t dissuade Julie, who follows him to his room anyways.

She hovers awkwardly in the doorway—she’s never been in here before. He watches her eyes roam around, taking in the guitars, the journals, the piles of CDs and records… and the unmade bed.

“Did I push too much?” she asks.

He yanks his work shirt out of his drawer. “I’ve just got work.”

“Luke.”

“And I have to change.”

She crosses her arms, refusing to leave. Almost daring him. Fine. He can play that game. He whips off his shirt and looks her dead on.

He doesn’t think she’s ever seen him without a shirt before. Maybe glimpses in the green room when he changes, and maybe parts of his chest as clothing got pulled to the side during their hookups, but never a full, unrushed look. Her gaze darts down for an extremely long second, then pulls back up to his eyes, determined. 

Very slowly, he slides on his work shirt, not breaking their eye contact.

He grabs his bag and heads to the door, but she steps right in front of him, and he’s acutely aware that this is the closest they’ve been in two months. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I was just teasing you. I didn’t… I thought you were just being a dick. I didn’t know you were actually jealous.”

He should deny it and he wants to. But he’s never liked lying, and he’s been getting the sense over the past two months that they were _not_ on the same page when they were hooking up. Maybe if he’d said actual, real, honest words that he meant, instead of throwing random songs between them, they wouldn’t be in this situation.

He can’t be fully honest now because that ship has sailed, but he can get close.

“Just, please don’t date someone who says you’re cool. Date someone who says you’re extraordinary.” Her gaze locks on his and it’s too much. He never wants to look away and he needs to immediately. Desperate to cut the tension, he shrugs. “Dudes who try to play it cool are usually pretty trash.”

“I’m not going to date Nick,” she assures him gently. Then: “I have homework to do. Can I come hang out while you’re at work?”

Bashful, he rubs the back of his neck. “My shift doesn’t start for another two hours.”

She rolls her eyes fondly, grabs his wrist, and tugs him gently out of the house. “Oh, I know.”

* * *

But for the most part, what he finds most awkward about their relationship is how not awkward it is. Their… whatever-you-want-to-call-it doesn’t actually come up that often. The moments that pain him, more often than not, are the moments of absence. The moments after an open mic when she drives home with Flynn without so much as a glance at him. The moments at parties when the guys try to get him to pick someone up and she doesn’t react. The moments after their garage parties when he needs a second to himself and finds himself in the alleyway, alone.

And moments like this, when it’s three am and they’re in one of the practice rooms and he’s in a chair and she’s sitting on the edge of the piano in a dress with her skirt right at his eyeline and he imagines how easy it would be to scoot his chair forward and slide his face between her thighs and—

“Fuck, I’ve been writing about the wrong Bach.” He pulls his mind out of her skirt to find her glaring at her laptop. “Who writes a question like that and doesn’t specify that they’re talking about C.P.E. and not J.S.?”

Normally, he’d feel a pang of insufficiency at not knowing what she’s talking about, but he’s still trying to calm himself down. “Yeah, how embarrassing for them.”

She sticks her tongue out at him. “Why are there so many Bachs?”

“Because sometimes privilege is not subtle.”

He watches her angrily delete her paragraph, then finally asks the question he’s been dying to ask for months. “Why are you doing the vocals arts major and not the pop music one?” Flynn is in pop music, and Julie’s never really indicated much interest in the classical music that tends to be the focus of her coursework. She’s in a pop-rock band, for crying out loud, and the amount of time she spends studying music that she doesn’t seem to be professionally interested in confuses him a bit.

She sits away from her laptop. “My mom thought it would be beneficial. Kinda like cross-training, I guess? Learning a bunch of different vocal skills, especially the types of singing that doesn’t come naturally to me. And opera was a weirdly big part of my childhood, so I wasn’t really ready to let go of it yet.”

Julie as an actual opera fan wasn’t something that ever really occurred to him. He almost laughs, but he swallows the sound in case opera is a more personal thing to her than he realizes. “Your mom?” he asks delicately.

“No, my mom was into rock. My dad is the one who loves opera. We still go together sometimes.”

He leans back, triumphant. “So my _Magic Flute_ reference when we met wasn’t too far off.”

“Oh, no, my dad would consider that a hideously modern opera.”

He doesn’t know much about Mozart, but he’s pretty sure _The Magic Flute_ is a late 1700s thing. “… what does he think counts as a modern opera?”

“Anything after 1730.” He laughs. “That probably gives you the wrong impression. He’s not a pretentious hipster. He just loves baroque opera.” There’s a deep fondness to her voice, as there always is when she talks about her dad.

“And here’s me, not knowing any music pre-1950.” He tries to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but he doubts he succeeds. He knows that the limits in his music knowledge aren’t about not going to USC because that’s not even where a lot of Julie’s musical knowledge comes from, but he often feels very ignorant next to her. It’s hard for him to uncouple the idea that his ignorance and his not going to Thornton are somehow linked.

Suddenly serious, she ducks her head to claim his gaze. “You know that doesn’t matter, right? You’re not trying to do pre-1950s music, or win Jeopardy with your all-around music knowledge. You already know what kind of music you want to make and you know everything there is to know about it. A lot of my classmates don’t have that.”

He knows he attaches too much weight to a music degree, but he didn’t realize that she knew that. Probably because, when they were hooking up, she didn’t seem comfortable bringing up anything to do with USC.

“Are you trying to spin me being musically ignorant into something positive?”

She sighs, exasperated. “You’re not musically ignorant. You know what you need to know. For example, pre-1950s: you know Robert Johnson. You can’t be super into Cream and not know Robert Johnson.”

He quirks his head. “Who said I’m super into Cream?”

She gestures at all of him. He grins. “Okay, fair.” And then, confirming her suspicion: “And yeah, I love Robert Johnson.”

She grins. “Of course you do. You’ve got great taste in music.”

“Doesn’t that just mean I like the music you like?”

“Exactly.” She beams, and his heart skips. But then her voice slips back into lecture mode. “But seriously. Robert Johnson was a poor black man in 1930s Mississippi who died young, and places like Thornton will never value him. There’s only one class here that teaches anything about him, and guitar majors don’t have to take it. Without Robert Johnson, you don’t get Eric Clapton or Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin, but the guitarists at this school don’t learn about him.”

Luke hadn’t realized that “cute girl rants about Robert Johnson and academia” was a turn on for him, and he really doesn’t think that information is helpful.

He shouldn’t, but he can’t help it. “Do you think Nick knows who Robert Johnson is?”

“Do you want me to ask him?” she asks, like it’s a challenge.

“If it comes up.”

She shakes her head, exasperated, and nudges his knee with her foot. “You know more about music than a lot of the people here. You never needed USC to validate you as a musician. I wish you believed that.”

His heart kinda melts at her faith in him. But he’s not emotionally able to sit with the intensity of her support for long without doing something ridiculous, like kissing her. So he shrugs. “I don’t know anything about any of the Bachs.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I guess I’ll never know.”

“If it ever seems relevant, I’ll tell you what you need to know.” She grins at him, and his heart skips at the reminder that she’s planning to be in his life long-term. She leans back on the piano, resting on her arms, her chest protruding, and again he’s reminded of their positions. Now he’s trying not to stare at her skirt or at her chest, and from this angle, that’s really most of what he can see. Maybe he should look at the wall. That’s normal, right? People look at walls all the time.

“Really, though, I think you would like baroque opera,” she continues, boldly assuming his mind is capable of focusing on music when she’s sitting like that. “It’s not like that stereotypical image people have of opera. Baroque opera is fun and funny and playful. And there are a lot of sex jokes.” She nudges his knee again.

He quirks an eyebrow at her. “I don’t really make sex jokes.”

“Yes, you do,” she insists.

“Just with you,” he answers before he can stop himself.

There’s a very long, awkward silence, as they both try very hard to think about _that_.

Desperate for a distraction, he grabs his guitar. “Come on, let me hear you slay some Robert Johnson.”

“Which one?” she asks. Mischievously, he starts playing the guitar lick that opens most Johnson songs. She laughs. “That could be literally anything.”

“Pick your favorite.”

She watches him for a moment, and there’s such fondness in her eyes that he instantly smiles back, sure he’s doing the puppy dog look. Somehow, he’s not surprised when the lyrics she starts to sing are:

_When you got a good friend  
That will stay right by your side_

She nudges him again to sing with her.

_When you got a good friend  
That will stay right by your side_

Her voice fades out, her gaze locked with his as he finishes the chorus.

_Give her all your spare time,  
Love and treat her right._

She licks her lips, and he’s so aware of the lyrics he just sang to her, of the lateness of the hour, of how alone they are, of the fact that he knows what she looks and feels like when she comes apart, of how easy it would be to just lean forward and—

He wants her so badly that he feels like he’s spinning.

But it would be a mistake. He can’t close that gap between them.

“You should probably get back to C.P.E.,” he points out, hoping she won’t comment on how husky his voice is.

She nods slowly, dazed, before she forces her attention back to her laptop.

He spends the rest of the night trying to calm his heart down.

* * *

So really, he’s not surprised by what happens at their next open mic night. They’ve just bounced off stage into the green room after a killer performance of “Finally Free” and Reggie’s asking if they want to go to Pink’s for hot dogs, when Luke realizes that Julie’s hanging back.

“What’s up?”

She swallows, tense. “I signed up for another slot.” She holds up a few sheets of music. “My mom… she wrote a song for me, and I think today’s the day I’m ready. It’s a solo.”

He tries to keep his massive grin under control—he wants her to feel encouraged, not pushed. “You good being out there by yourself?”

She nods. “But will you watch?”

“Of course.” Luke hasn’t even noticed that Alex and Reggie are at his side until the drummer speaks, resting his elbow on Luke’s shoulder and giving her a supportive smile.

“Where do you want us?” Reggie asks. “Front row, back row?”

A soft smile appears on her face as she takes them all in. Her boys. “Wherever. Just knowing you guys are out there helps.”

Alex and Reggie go to grab them seats, but Luke lingers for a moment. “You’re gonna kill it,” he whispers softly.

She smiles back. “Thanks.”

It turns out that there aren’t any seats left, so they’re standing in a cramped line against the back of the venue with Flynn when Julie comes out.

She doesn’t hesitate when she steps onto the stage or when she sits behind the keyboard, but she doesn’t introduce herself or her song, which is how Luke knows she’s not nearly as confident as she’s trying to project.

But she stares down at the keys, and there’s that look on her face again. The going into battle look. More nervous, more shaky, but there. She exhales firmly, nods to herself, and starts to play.

Luke knows the song because, to be honest, he’s a snoop and he once saw the corner of a piece of paper in one of her writing journals that looked like a handwritten song, so when she went to the bathroom, he read it. He knows the lyrics of “Wake Up,” knows how powerful and beautiful they are.

But as soon as Julie begins to sing, he can’t pay attention to the words. The sound of her voice washes over him, and he’s watching her face, the trepidation and agony as she sings slowly giving way to determination. Before she starts the chorus, she pauses and seems to force a look onto her face. That look she had when she took the mic from him.

She’s got this. She’s fucking got this.

He can feel tears starting to spill down his face, and he feels an arm come around his side. It’s Flynn, her face also covered in tears, hugging him, her eyes not leaving the stage.

Joy starts to mix with the pain on Julie’s face, and it’s like he can see something inside her unlocking. Like she’s only been able to access half of her musical resources up to now, and she’s finally forcing open the door to let it all out. She stands up at the piano like she can’t be contained, her eyes on the ceiling like she’s sending the song to her mom. When she reaches the bridge, her face cycles through pain, resolve, and bliss at an almost dizzying speed. Underneath it all, her voice doesn’t shake or flinch. There’s a power to her singing that genuinely makes him feel weak at the knees.

Alex rests his head on Luke’s shoulder, sniffing. Luke can’t take his eyes off Julie, but he registers the light thump that feels like Reggie also joining the group side hug, and he hears what sounds like a nose being gently blown into flannel.

He doesn’t know what they look like to the rest of the crowd, these four twenty-year-olds clutching one another and sobbing joyfully at what, to anyone else, probably just seems like a really killer performance at an open mic night.

But it’s not just killer. It’s Julie coming home to herself, and he doesn’t think there’s anything more beautiful or powerful in the world.

For Luke, it’s even more than that. He’s not surprised by how his heart goes wild the entire time she’s performing. He’s not surprised by how tender and proud watching her on stage by herself makes him feel. He’s not even surprised that, when she sings the high note, he realizes he’s in love.

He’s only surprised it took him so long to notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs/musical references in this chapter:  
> • "Jealous Guy" by John Lennon  
> • Cream (needs no introduction, but I'm such a sucker for "Tales of Brave Ulysses" and "I Feel Free")  
> • "When You Got a Good Friend" by Robert Johnson (and artists like Eric Clapton, who have recorded covers of a lot of Robert Johnson's songs)  
> • "Wake Up"


	6. I Wouldn’t Call This A Love Song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Hollywood" by Jukebox the Ghost (I like to make it official pearlcaddy policy to put JtG in Jukebox fics. It took me six chapters, but I finally succeeded.)
> 
> Fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fQCo2E0xEAeYDO9pk8jYu?si=ZJd75ocxT-GSagauI2tmVg)

The shy knock on Luke’s bedroom door is unexpected. After all, it’s almost 3 am and Alex is a very consistent lights-out-at-10 sleeper and even Reggie goes to bed at the more respectable hour of 1 am. 

Also, Reggie doesn’t knock. Reggie appears.

But Luke knows what today is, and he remembers who else now has a key to their house. So he’s not surprised when he opens the door.

“Sorry to come over so late.” Julie stands in the hallway, trembling. 

“You know I don’t sleep," he replies softly. "You want to come in?”

She nods, shaking.

He immediately steps aside and she slides past. She dumps her purse on the floor, the loud thunk echoing around the room, and her eyes dart around nervously, her hands fisting into hem of her black dress. He watches her, not sure what to say. A sudden thought for the time strikes him.

“How did you get here? I woulda come picked you up if—”

“Campus cruiser.”

“Okay, good.” She doesn’t say anything, and her hands pull more aggressively at the fabric of her dress. “Jules?” he asks, shifting closer but leaving her space.

Her hands still for a moment, then she steps forward and tugs on the hem of his shirt, looking up at him with pleading eyes. She’s not trying to pull his shirt off, but her intent is clear, her eyes asking permission.

His brain stutters, trying to catch up. “Jules—”

“Please, I need to stop thinking.”

It’s like everything inside him collapses as he realizes what she’s asking for.

“That would be a majorly bad idea.”

“I just need a break from my own head. Please, Luke.”

On the list of things he can do, saying no to Julie Molina when she’s literally begging to sleep with him isn’t something he expected. But this would be a truly colossal mistake. He wraps his hands over hers, stopping her from pulling up his shirt.

Eyes wide, she peers up into his face. “Are you rejecting me?” she asks in a small, broken voice.

He shakes his head and rests his forehead against hers. “I just don’t think it’s going to help right now.”

A shiver runs through her body as she searches his eyes. “You know what today is?” He nods. “How?”

“Obituary. I wasn’t trying to pry or anything. I just wanted to know when it was so I could…” It had felt egotistical to assume she would want his support, but he’d wanted to at least know when it was happening, so she wouldn’t need to explain if she needed something. “I don’t know. So I’d know when to not be a dick.”

Her whole face seems to fold in on itself. “I just want to not think,” she whispers desperately.

He wants to say “I know,” but… he doesn’t know. He can only guess, and he knows his guesses fall short. “You wanna sit?”

She nods. He tugs her gently toward the bed and she immediately lies down and curls up in the middle of it. Perching precariously on the edge, he tries to leave a safe distance between them, but she cuddles into him.

“Is this okay?” she asks into his chest.

“Yeah, of course.”

He lies there, not sure what she needs. There’s a long, buzzing silence, and he can hear Alex’s words from months ago on loop in his head: _You can’t be a good source of emotional support because you’re a hot mess._

Her voice cuts through his doubts. “I wish today didn’t exist. I don’t really know what to do with it.”

“You going to visit her later?”

She nods into his chest. “Yeah, I’m spending the weekend with my family.” She sighs. “I know I’m lucky that they live here and that I get to be with them today.” Her thumb runs over the graphic on his shirt in a gentle, soothing loop. “But I feel like I need to be strong for my little brother, because he’s just so...” Her voice cracks, and he’s not sure if she actually whispers the word “young” or if he just autocompletes it in his head. “And my dad, because he lost the love of his life. And my aunt, because she lost her sister. I just… I don’t where that leaves space for me.”

He runs his hands gently over her hair, thinking about how her words echo in some ways the things Reggie said when they were in school. That he felt like he needed to be the strong, stable presence in the house when everything with his parents was falling apart, and that his inability to spend time acknowledging and taking care of his own feelings ended up breaking away pieces of him.

He clears his throat, trying to organize his thoughts. “I don’t really have experience with grief, but I feel like people trying to be strong for other people usually makes things worse. Cause you end up draining your own resources while everyone else is inventing their own reasons to convince themselves that _they_ have to be the strong ones. Just turns into a bunch of people trying to be strong for each other and no one taking care of themselves. I think the best thing you can do for your family is to show up and for all of you to just feel what you feel.”

He feels dampness on his shirt, but she’s still looking into his stomach and he knows she’s not ready to look at him.

“I should be strong,” she whispers, her voice tiny and choked.

“You lost your mom. No one’s asking you to be strong. No one’s asking you to be anything but what you are.”

She traces her fingers over the printed “v” on his shirt, tracing it one way and then the other. He puts his hand on her arm, not stopping her movement, but offering his support.

“If no one else existed in the world, what would you want to do today?” he asks.

She doesn’t pause as long as he thought she would. “We were writing a song together. She said she wanted me to finish it, but I still haven’t worked on it.”

“Do you feel ready to?”

She raises her head from his chest enough to look up at him. “Not by myself. But maybe… with you?”

She’s called him incredible, amazing, talented… any number of compliments over the past six months since the first garage party. But he knows this is the biggest compliment she could ever offer him.

“Are you sure?” he double-checks.

She nods. “It’s in my bag.”

Because she seems reluctant to get up, he sits up gently, only dislodging her enough to snag her bag from the floor. He grabs the notebook from inside and then props himself up against his headboard. She sits up, slotting herself firmly under his arm without hesitation. Flipping through the notebook, she points to the page.

“Stand Tall.”

They work through the night, trading lyrics and quietly humming melodies to one another, and it’s only when she starts yawning heavily through her hushed singing that he realizes it’s 8 am.

“When’s your dad coming to pick you up?” he murmurs.

“One.”

“You should get some sleep. Want me to drive you back to yours?”

She yawns again and snuggles into his shoulder, eyes drifting shut. “Can I just crash here?”

“Yeah, of course.”

As he sets an alarm on his phone, she mumbles through yet another yawn, “I’m sorry I tried to sleep with you. I know you’re not just a piece of meat.”

“You’re good,” he replies gently.

By the time he looks back at her, she’s fallen asleep cradling into him. He rests his head on top of hers and lets himself drift off.

* * *

Two weeks later, she texts him. “Band rehearsal?”

Alex and Reggie are at work, and he knows she knows that, so he heads out to the garage with trepidation.

She’s sitting in the middle of the floor, her keyboard detached from its stand and lying in front of her.

“What’s up?” he asks.

But her face doesn’t give anything away. “Grab your six string?”

He does and sits on the floor in front of her.

She inhales like she’s about to go to war and sets a lyric sheet with tabs in front of him. But before he can even read the song title, she speaks in a rush.

“When we were… we never really talked about what was going on and I’m starting to think that … I don’t know. That I had the wrong idea about what all of that meant, and maybe you don’t know what I felt about what was going on and obviously we’re both bad at talking about our feelings unless there’s singing involved so I thought we should sing and get on the same page.” She finally pauses to take a breath. “But, um, if the song is completely off base for you, then tell me and I’ll just—”

He glances at it. “Crazier Things,” Chelsea Cutler and Noah Kahan. He doesn’t even need to read the lyrics on the sheet—he’s listened to it an unreasonable number of times over the past three months. “No, uh, that’s… good for me.”

She finally meets his gaze because… well, that’s already a confession, isn’t it? He stares back, equally confused. There’s no way this is mutual. There’s no way these lyrics are as true for her as they are for him. But it was her suggestion?

She gives him a small nervous smile. He quickly tunes his guitar, and then he nods to her to start.

They both begin to play, and she takes the first verse.

_I've been trying not to think about it, I can't help it  
I know you don't wanna hear from me, but I am selfish_

She glances up at him and he shakes his head.

_It kills me inside you can drink on Friday nights  
Not even pick up the phone  
It amazes me you move on so easily  
From someone that you once called home_

So maybe she’s not as unaffected by the guys trying to get him to hook up with other people as he thought.

Her eyes lock on his, pleading.

_I wish you had enough discipline for the both of us  
Just because I don't know how to turn off the way I feel_

His heart starts beating faster. He knew there were remnants of a non-platonic vibe between them, but she had seemed so distant when they’d been hooking up that he’d been completely convinced that he was alone in his feelings.

_I know you always fell out love so damn easily, but honestly  
I don't think you ever had something real  
Until you met me_

She glances at him, like it’s a question, and he nods. Her eyes sparkle with tears.

_Drinks in New York City  
Ooh, you looked so pretty_

A gentle, playful smile enters her face as she sings the line. And even though it’s not the most important thing she’s telling him, he takes pleasure from the compliment because she’s never really commented on his appearance before.

_Think I fell in love before I even knew your birthday_

She doesn’t quite maintain eye contact as she sings about being in love, and he’s not sure whether that’s a sign that she can’t look at him while singing that or if it’s a lyric that doesn’t reflect her feelings.

_Kissed you on our first date_

He wonders if she remembers that kiss after their first open mic as vividly as he does.

_Somehow, I knew someday  
This would hurt 'cause I could never let you go  
Oh, I'll spend my whole life  
Missing a part of me, part of me  
Oh, I'll spend my whole life  
Hoping your heart is free, heart is free_

For a second, he’s frozen by the beauty of her face and her voice, even filled with wistful anguish. He snaps back to reality just in time to realize it’s his verse.

With his head, he gestures around to their band space.

_I've been trying not to think of this as something tragic_

She nods, like she’s agreeing with him. Wanting to love being in the band together, and trying not to focus on the pain of what it costs them.

_'Cause our two paths might cross again  
Crazier things have happened  
And I realize lightning strikes just once, not twice  
And shooting stars are burning rocks  
So I spend weeks inside, drowning in these dreams of mine_

He doesn’t want to look at her while he sings the next line, but the point of this is honesty, right? She should know.

_And wondering if I'm worth your thoughts_

Her face crumples, like she wants to argue, but that’s not the point of this exercise.

_I wish you had enough discipline for the both of us  
Just because I don't know how to turn off the way I feel_

His voice cracks with desperation.

_I know you always fell out of love so damn easily, but honestly  
I don't think you ever had something real_

This time, she’s the one who shakes her head, and she joins her voice to his.

_Until you met me  
Drinks in New York City  
Ooh, you looked so pretty  
Think I fell in love before I even knew your birthday_

This time, their eyes lock on the “in love.” At the thought of her feelings matching his, his heart begins to pound so hard that he feels his fingertips pulsing against the guitar strings.

_Kissed you on our first date  
Somehow, I knew someday  
This would hurt 'cause I could never let you go_

He’s both grateful and annoyed at the instruments that take up both of their hands, because he wants to reach across to her so much that it physical aches, even though he knows he shouldn’t.

_Do you not dream of me?  
'Cause I have visions in my sleep  
I can't ever find my peace now  
Do you wake up alone  
And feel an aching in your bones?  
Or are you happy without me now?_

Almost involuntarily, they both shake their heads.

Julie sings alone, her gaze dropping to her piano even though she’s not playing anymore.

_The first time that you told me  
You thought that you loved me  
That bar in the city  
I thought you were drunk  
But I knew deep down that you meant it_

She lifts her face to him, tears in her eyes.

_Wish that I had said it  
I was scared to let it happen  
But it happened and now I cannot forget it_

He joins his voice to hers for the end, trying to convey how deeply his feelings match the final lyrics.

_Oh, I'll spend my whole life  
Missing a part of me, part of me  
Oh, I'll spend my whole life  
Hoping your heart is free, heart is free_

He finishes the guitar part, and as the final note rings in the space, they just look at one another.

“Yeah” is all he can say. He wants to make some kind of flippant comment, but he can’t get himself to cut the tension in the air between them.

“Me too.” She nods, not taking her hands off her keyboard. He keeps his fingers firmly pressed to his strings. He feels like they’re both trying desperately to maintain a grip on their instruments so they don’t do something dangerous like reach for one another.

“But the band…” he whispers.

“Yeah, the band.”

They sit in the weight of the silence, and it starts to feel like it will never end, like they’ll have to sit here like this until Alex and Reggie come home because how on earth do they break this tension?

He can’t bear it anymore.

“Can we, uh, please play something else?”

A small, grateful smile crosses her face. “What did you have in mind?”

He tries to think of something that makes him feel the exact opposite of Chelsea Cutler, who he’s really starting to resent. “You like Stealers Wheel?”

She cocks her head, like she’s playing a song in her head. “‘Stuck in the Middle’ doesn’t have piano in it.”

“Pft. ‘Stuck’ is overrated. I’m thinking ‘Blind Faith.’”

She grins. “I love ‘Blind Faith.’”

“Course you do. You’ve got great taste in music.”

Immediately recognizing his use of her words, she shakes her head playfully. He smiles back, and he can _feel_ that he’s doing the puppy dog eyes, and she’s gazing back with the same expression and… God, they really need to just stop looking at each other if this is going to work.

“‘Blind Faith,’” she insists sharply, shaking her head to bring them back to reality.

“‘Blind Faith,’” he agrees.

They pull up tabs for their instruments on their phones, and begin to play “Blind Faith,” slowly letting the awkwardness and intensity of the moment dissipate into jumping around and rocking out. Stealers Wheel covers turn into Republica covers turn into Dandy Warhols covers and suddenly Alex is running in in his work uniform yelling, “You can’t play ‘Styggo’ without your drummer, you monsters!” and then they’re playing The Score covers and suddenly Reggie is running in yelling, “Jam sesh!” and then they’re playing Dotan and all chanting the bridge of “Home” at one another.

And as Luke meets Julie’s eyes across the room, he can tell by her face that she’s feeling the same thing he is. The band is home. Nothing can mess with this. If they try to be something and it fails, it could threaten this weird little family they've put together. Even though he’s so in love with her that sometimes it hurts his soul a bit, nothing is more important than their home.

She gives him a sad smile as they sing the final lines of the song with the rest of the guys:

_Through the warmth, through the cold, keep running 'til we're there  
We're coming home now, we're coming home now_

He loves her. (She loves him too?)

But…

the band.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Songs/musical references in this chapter:  
> • "Crazier Things" by Chelsea Cutler and Noah Kahan  
> • Stealers Wheel: “Stuck in the Middle with You,” "Blind Faith"  
> • Republica: e.g. "Ready to Go"  
> • "Styggo" by the Dandy Warhols (which you really _shouldn’t_ perform without your drummer)  
> • The Score: e.g. “Never Going Back” and “Running All Night”  
> • “Home" by Dotan  
> 


	7. The First Bite Marks The Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from “The Wrestle” by Frightened Rabbit
> 
> Fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fQCo2E0xEAeYDO9pk8jYu?si=ZJd75ocxT-GSagauI2tmVg)

“Guess who’s joining us at the Jukebox the Ghost gig tonight!” Flynn bounces triumphantly into their rehearsal space.

Julie looks up from her keyboard blankly. “Who?”

“Nick!”

“Oh.”

Luke can feel Alex and Reggie studying him, and he tries to keep a neutral face. He’s not actually threatened by Nick—Julie’s always seemed apathetic whenever he comes up. But ever since they sang their duet in the garage, he’s felt… well, he knows the point of the duet was supposed to be “wow, we really like each other but also we know being together would be a bad idea,” but his heart really seems to only have internalized the first half of that. Julie feels… well, not like she’s his, because obviously she’s a strong independent woman who don’t need no man and she will never belong to anyone and they’re not even together. But her heart feels a bit like his right now.

So he doesn’t care about Nick specifically, but his heart is currently throwing a tantrum over the general idea of her being set up with someone else.

“’Oh??’” Flynn looks horrified at Julie’s less than enthusiastic reaction. “How about some gratitude?”

“You know I’m not interested in Nick.”

“Maybe not, but you should be.”

Reggie can’t help but pipe up, because he’s Reggie. “Is that how that works?”

Flynn will not be derailed and she points a stern finger at her friend. “You have a history of making poor decisions with guys.” It’s a sign of her slightly softening feelings towards Luke that she doesn’t directly point at him, but everyone in the room already knows what she’s talking about. “So trust me on this. Nick is solid, and he’s meeting us at the venue at 7.”

She gestures to all the guys. “All of you, behave yourselves tonight.” Her eyes cut specifically to Luke, who shrugs defensively.

She turns back to Julie. “What are you wearing?”

“… this?”

“Oh no, we need to take that up a notch. Come over after you’re done so we can elevate the gorgeousness.”

And with that, she sweeps out of the garage.

Julie smashes her face down onto her keyboard. “Whyyyy.”

Wishing he didn’t feel so relieved at how opposed she is to being set up with Nick, Luke laughs. “Not looking forward to your date with Prince Charming?”

She lifts her face to glare. “Why didn’t you all stop her?”

“Flynn cannot be stopped. The best you can do is just duck so she runs past,” Alex suggests sagely.

“I was really looking forward to this gig. What am I supposed to do?”

With a devilish grin, Luke starts strumming the verse to “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” She raises a suspicious eyebrow. “What are you doing?”

Alex begins drumming.

“Oh no.”

Luke grins. “What, not fun on the receiving end, Princess?”

“Reggie, please don’t—”

Reggie begins playing the bass line.

“Would you guys please—”

But they’re about to reach the chorus, and they cannot be stopped. Luke dances over to her and sings the end of the verse.

_I’d like to help you in your struggle to be free  
There must be 50 ways to leave your lover  
50 ways to leave your lover_

Reggie sings the beginning of the chorus.

_You just slip out the back, Jack  
Make a new plan, Stan_

Alex yells over from his drum set.

_You don't need to be coy, Roy  
Just get yourself free_

She shakes her head at them, but Luke nods his head with a mischievous grin, inviting her to join. She rolls her eyes but then, because it’s impossible not to with this song, she starts singing, and the whole band finishes the chorus together.

_Hop on the bus, Gus  
You don't need to discuss much  
Just drop off the key, Lee  
And get yourself free_

“You’re all horrible,” she cuts them off. “That was a misuse of Paul Simon, and you”—she points to Luke—“mixed up the verses.”

“You love us.” Reggie throws his arm around Luke’s shoulders. Her eyes find Luke’s.

“Reluctantly, yes.”

So, yeah. It’s hard to really care about Nick.

* * *

Until they’re outside the venue and Nick bounces over to them like a golden retriever puppy. “Hey, Julie!” he grins.

“Hey, Nick.” She smiles. It’s clearly not her full smile, but Nick doesn’t notice. Luke knows it’s not a fair comparison, because he’s in love with this girl and Nick barely knows her, but he’s still going to feel smug.

“You look pretty tonight.”

Luke bristles at that. Julie’s beautiful, not just pretty, and her beauty is not bound to a single evening. Insufficient compliment, dude.

But Julie laughs nervously. “Thanks.”

As they head into the bar with their fake IDs, Alex swings an arm around Luke’s shoulder and holds him back. “Easy.”

“What?”

“This guy hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“He’s bouncing around her like a puppy.”

Reggie raises an eyebrow. “A bit like looking into a mirror?”

Luke licks his finger and tries to slip it into Reggie’s ear but Reggie dances out of wet willy range.

Inside the bar, Flynn steers them towards a booth. It looks slightly too small for the six people who are meant to occupy it, which Luke quickly realizes is the point when Flynn shoves Nick and Julie in next to one another. Luke quickly slides in after. He knows Flynn is looking unimpressed with him, but he pointedly ignores her.

But he quickly realizes that sitting next to the two of them might be a mistake when Nick asks Julie, “Are you going to the Castelnuovo-Tedesco thing?”

It’s an immediate, sharp reminder that Luke 1) doesn’t know who Castelnuovo-Tedesco is, and 2) is completely separate from Julie’s school life. He’s all set to spiral, when Julie says his name.

“Actually, Luke, I was going to suggest that you come to that too. It’s this classical guitar duo, SoloDuo, and I think we could maybe rip some ideas from how they perform for you and Reggie.” She grins, as if trying to tempt him. “I think you’ll actually like them. They’re pretty badass.”

“Yeah, sounds cool.” To be honest, she could probably ask if he wants to help her pick out new mop heads and he would say it sounds cool, but this feels like an invitation to her world.

“Awesome, I’ll get a plus one.”

Nick’s face falls, and Flynn looks violently unimpressed again, but Luke can claim full deniability for that one. That was all Julie.

He has a little less deniability when the opening act comes out, and it turns out that they’re determined to be a (deeply mediocre) pop-rock Dandy Warhols cover band.

When they start playing “Get Off,” Julie bursts out laughing. Baffled, Flynn and Nick exchange a confused glance.

“Luke tried to make us sing this for his parents once,” she explains.

“I still think it would have been funny.”

Alex shakes his head, horrified. “Every time I think you’re growing as a person.”

Perhaps proving Alex’s point, Luke looks at Julie and nods out to the dance floor. “Come on, you owe me this song.”

She doesn’t, and it’s an objectively nonsense thing to say, but she gets up and they scooch out past Nick.

As soon as they’re free of the booth, she grabs his hand so she doesn’t lose him as she pulls them into the mosh pit. When they find a spot, she tugs him to her side and immediately starts swaying from side-to-side, and then looks at him and begins to sing. Without hesitation, he begins to sing it back, swaying to the same rhythm.

_Baby, come on, yeah  
If you have a hard time getting there  
Maybe, you're gone  
If you find, find yourself against yourself_

_Yeah maybe I thought  
What I thought I would say  
That all I wanna do is get off_

His eyes sweep down her body, taking in her dark yellow off-shoulder skater dress. He knows he shouldn’t be eyeing her like that, but… look, Nick didn’t appreciate her enough and there’s a shy smirk spreading across her face and he has a really hard time regretting it.

_And feel it for a minute  
Like a real thing, baby, again  
I already forgot  
Why I thought I was sane_

A group dancing next to them bumps Julie and she stumbles into him. He immediately tucks her in front of him. To keep her safe. Definitely that’s why.

_When all I wanna do is get off  
And feel it, feel it, feel it babe  
Baby, come on, yeah  
If you have a hard time getting there_

As she jumps around, her hair keeps hitting him in the face, so he does the exact thing he shouldn’t. He puts his hands on her hips and pulls her in closer to him, tucking her head against his shoulder. She flashes him a quick grin, and then looks back at the stage as they continue to sway and sing.

_Maybe you're gone  
If you find, find yourself against yourself  
Hey, come on, yeah  
If you have a hard time getting there  
Maybe you're gone  
If you find, find yourself against yourself_

As the bridge goes quiet, they stop dancing for a moment, and she glances back at him and their eyes lock.

_And like it or not  
Like a ball and a chain_

As the instrumentals pick up, they start dancing again, their eyes staying together.

_All I wanna do is get off  
And feel it for a minute  
Like a real thing, baby, oh yeah_

Her gaze drops to his lips and she licks her own.

_I already forgot  
Why I thought I was sane_

He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, but he leans in close, trails his nose up along her bare shoulder and up her neck, and sings the next two lines right into her ear.

_But all I wanna do is get off  
And feel it, feel it, feel it, babe_

He can’t hear her breathy moan in the crowd, but he can feel it vibrating through her torso under his hands. She puts her hands over his and pulls them to the opposite hips so his arms are wrapped around her.

They’re not singing anymore. His face is buried in the crook of her neck, and he’s just enjoying her body swaying against his, mesmerized by the feel of her in his arms.

He barely registers that they’re reaching the end of the song, but when the band begins singing the rhythmic “heys” of the outro, he thrusts his hips forward in time to them. Julie’s hands tighten on his in response, and she presses back against him. 

The crowd begins cheering and for a moment he thinks it’s for them before he realizes that 1) they weren’t performing, and 2) people don’t tend to cheer public dry humping.

He instantly releases her. She stumbles and takes a couple breaths before she can look at him. 

“Yeah, I think we would have done a better job with that song,” she manages. “But, you know. Not in front of your parents.”

“Probably a good call.”

He has genuinely no idea what they’re talking about; his mind is completely focused on the middle of his body.

Julie swallows, and her voice comes out a little high. “I’m gonna get some water. Do you want anything?”

“No, I’m good. I’ll probably just go back to the booth.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.”

There’s a pause, and then she suddenly whips off her cross-body purse and holds it out to him. “You might want to… carry that.” She gives him a very awkward thumbs up and hurries over to the bar.

He looks down and realizes that, yeah, he definitely needs something to hold in front of him.

By the time he gets back to the booth, Flynn and Nick are gone.

“Where did they go?” he asks as he collapses into his seat.

“Oh, they’re dancing.” Alex says delicately. “I think Flynn was trying to distract him from the, you know, clothed sex.”

Luke’s face flushes. “Yeah, that got unexpectedly heated.”

Reggie’s mouth drops open. “ _Unexpectedly?_ ”

Alex blinks at him. “What did you think was going to happen with that song?”

“I just thought we were going to sing it!”

Yeah, okay, maybe that does sound kinda implausible when he says it aloud.

Alex reaches across the table and puts his hand over Luke’s. “Luke Patterson, I love you, you are one of my dearest friends and you are part of my very soul, but I cannot speak to you for the rest of the night because the amount of bullshit coming out of your mouth is making me physically ill.”

Alex pops out of the booth. Reggie looks like he may stay put, but Julie appears with her water and he jumps to his feet. “I’m gonna go with Alex!”

Julie slides in next to him.

“Everyone dancing?”

“Yeah.”

Amazing how quickly they’ve switched from the charged energy on the dance floor to the awkwardness at the table.

She sinks back into her seat and nods at the stage with a wince. “Promise me we’re better than them.”

“We definitely do a more diverse range of covers.”

“Until the day you get us to do Cream. Then we’re just going to be a Cream cover band and my entire life is going to be spent on your Eric Clapton fixation.” She nudges him with a grin.

“I do not have an Eric Clapton fixation.” He pokes her side and she squeaks. His face lights up. “Julie Molina, are you ticklish?”

“No!”

He tickles her side, but he’s not getting quite enough of a reaction. He reaches for her armpit, but she swats him away. “I am sweating buckets in here, it’s not worth it.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m about.” Then he remembers another good tickle spot, and wiggles his fingers behind her knee. She bursts out giggling. “Stop, stop, please.” He shakes his head mercilessly, reaching his hand over her thigh so he can get to the inside of her knee.

She’s laughing and he’s laughing and he’s moving in closer to keep tickling her, and then he realizes that he’s basically gripping her inner thigh and their eyes lock and suddenly neither of them is laughing.

He stops tickling her, but that just makes it worse, because now his hand is just on her thigh. She’s still a little out of breath from her giggle fit, and he’s hyper aware that his thumb is only inches from the hem of her dress. Her gaze flickers to his lips. Testing the waters, he rubs his thumb back and forth on her thigh, thrilling in the feel of her skin against his again after so long. She lets out a shaky breath, which melts into an encouraging smile, and he dares to shift his hand up a little higher, his thumb now slipping under her hem.

A small noise comes out of her, like a swallowed moan, and he lets his thumb drift sideways, from the top of her thigh to her inner thigh. She closes her eyes, and he’s not sure whether it’s from pleasure or if she’s just trying to lessen the intensity of their eye contact. But then she lifts herself up from the seat and scoots forward, closer to the table. His fingers, staying where they are in midair, are now virtually touching her pelvis.

She gazes out at the crowd, as if she’s watching the gig, and sips her water. But then she glances sideways at him and gives a tiny nod before turning her eyes back to the stage.

He slides his fingers under her underwear.

In the background, he’s dimly aware of the song changing and the audience cheering and people singing, and then another song starting and then another, but he’s entirely focused on her, watching her hands tighten on her cup and on the table’s edge. Her breaths get faster and deeper, her face more flushed, and her eyes brighter, all without looking at him. He can’t take his eyes off of her—he’s pretty sure that if someone looks over, his intense gaze on her will be the thing that gives them away, but he can’t look away because she’s beautiful and because he’s made her like this. Her breathing is getting more and more rapid, and her hips start to rock and—

“Oof, that is exhausting.”

Nick flops into the booth, thankfully not looking at them immediately, and Luke withdraws his hand like he’s been burned.

“I can’t keep up with Flynn. I need a drink. Can I get you anything?”

Oh, thank god. He’s leaving.

Julie, seemingly incapable of speech, nods eagerly. Luke answers for her. “Yeah, could you just grab us some water?”

“Of course! Be back in…” Nick eyes the long line at the bar, then shoots Julie a smile. “A century, apparently?”

She giggles, and Luke has to swallow his own laugh—Nick might think it’s a flirty giggle, but Luke can hear the desperation and breathiness in it. It’s a giggle that’s begging him to leave so Luke can continue.

Luke would feel bad for the guy if it weren’t for the fact that, at this exact moment, he doesn’t feel bad for the guy at all.

As soon as Nick vacates the booth, Julie grabs Luke’s hand and returns it to its place between her legs. Her eagerness gives him a thrill as he starts up again, relishing the feeling of how close she is. She puts her hand on his knee and squeezes tightly in time to his movements. Her breathing gets more ragged and she’s biting her lip and almost quivering and—

“They have mozzarella sticks!” Reggie slaps a platter onto the table triumphantly. Once again, Luke jerks his hand away.

Reggie stuffs a couple mozzarella sticks in his mouth, his eyes not leaving his phone. “Do you guys want some?”

Exhaling, Julie manages to sound impressively normal as she says, “Yes, please.”

For a second, Luke wonders whether this is it, whether they’re just going to pretend none of what just happened happened. But after checking that Reggie’s attention is on his phone, she makes eye contact with Luke and slips the mozzarella stick into her mouth as if she’s deepthroating it.

Jesus Christ.

Mozzarella sticks are not meant to be sexy.

“Really?” he hisses at her. She smirks, then grabs a napkin and wipes his fingers dry. The fingers that were just inside her. She tucks the napkin in his pocket, then she grabs another mozzarella stick and pops it in his mouth.

“Mozzarella’s a good source of protein” is all she says.

He takes a bite and removes the rest of the stick. “It’s deep-fried. Is it a good source of anything?”

She shrugs. “Probably a lot of carbs. And you never know when you need to be carbed up,” she suggests innocently.

He almost chokes. This girl will be the actual death of him. He’s going to implode in this bar and Alex is going to be so disappointed in him.

“Eh, Luke’s already gone to the gym today,” Reggie observes absently, still not looking up from his phone.

“Never too late for a workout.” Luke’s tone is mild, but he shoots Julie a look that is just short of a wink.

Before she can reply, Alex plops in the booth on the other side of Julie. “Strongly disagree—it’s _always_ too late for a workout.”

Julie laughs and again it feels like the heat between them will pass, but then she scooches over to make room for Alex and unnecessarily presses the entire length of her thigh against Luke’s leg. He’s acutely aware of both her proximity and her lack of release, and he doesn’t bring his mind off of them for the rest of the gig.

* * *

“Aside from the less-than-Dandy opening act, that was great and we definitely need to do that again,” Flynn informs the group as they make their way through the parking lot.

When they stop beside her car, she turns to Nick. “I’m actually heading back to Los Feliz for the night. Would you mind driving Julie home?” she asks innocently.

For a moment, Luke’s heart sinks, but smooth as can be, Julie interrupts. “Oh, no need. Luke’s driving me.”

Surprised, Flynn tries to catch Julie’s eye, but Luke nods at his bandmates. “Ready to head out?”

“Yeah. See you later.” Julie gives Nick a smile, polite but not encouraging. Luke does _not_ grin, because he’s not petty. (He grins.)

They get into his car and she claims the passenger’s seat while Alex and Reggie pile into the backseat.

The ride back is… actually, Luke has no idea how it is. He’s trying and failing not to think about how many times he’s eaten her out in that seat. Alex and Reggie are chatting in the backseat, and Julie is somehow having a conversation with them, but all Luke is aware of is that every time he reaches for the gear shift, his hand is just inches from her bare thigh. And sometimes, when they stop at lights, she runs her fingers up her thigh and makes eye contact with him.

Seriously. This girl.

As they approach the USC campus, it occurs to him that the guys will be expecting him to drop her off first. He’s trying to think of an excuse for why he can’t do that when Julie says smoothly, “Actually, I need to grab something at Ralphs. Do you mind?”

“Sure, I’ll just drop the guys off first.”

Desperately hoping that Reggie and Alex don’t do something outrageous like also want to get groceries, he checks with them in the rearview mirror. The guys just hum their assent.

He lets them off at the house and starts driving towards her apartment. Then he glances over at her. “Unless you actually wanted to go to Ralphs?”

“No.” She grins.

He grins back. “Nice.”

For a second, he gets to enjoy that they’re finally alone and that _something_ is going to happen. Only then does he realize how weird this now feels. It’s been several hours since they were alone in the club—what’s the plan here, he’s just going to finger her in the car and then they go on their merry way?

Once again, she has the answer. “I was thinking—we’re clearly breaking the rule tonight. So we might as well do it properly.”

Oh thank god. “Is Flynn actually in Los Feliz?” he asks.

“Yep. She’s very committed to her role.”

“So your apartment is free tonight.”

“Sex in a bed: something new and different for us?”

He grins. “Sounds perfect.”

The parking gods of LA grant him this one small favor, and there’s actually a spot outside her apartment building. (Though to be honest, he might have just parked in a red zone anyways—Julie’s worth a parking ticket.) As they walk into her building, his heart thumps deep in his chest, and his simultaneous excitement and arousal make him almost dizzy. His whole body is tingling with anticipation, and he finally really, truly understands what that expression means because her apartment is on the third floor and he feels like he’s going to dance out of his skin the entire walk up.

She lets them in and immediately leads the way to her room.

He’s never been in here before: they always hang out at his house. Normally, he would want to explore every single inch of the room, to learn all the details about her that he can, especially the embarrassing ones. But right now, he only has eyes for her.

There’s a second where he wonders whether this will be like all the times before, when she held herself at a distance. But only a second. Because then she spins around, pushes her fingers into his hair, and yanks him to her eagerly. She catches his mouth in a desperate kiss, but the intensity of it isn’t that of the aggressive one they shared in the green room. Instead, it’s like she’s trying to pour all the months of longing and feelings into it. He almost stumbles into her, and he grabs onto her face to hold himself steady as the kiss becomes more frantic.

When she finally pulls away, he rests his forehead against hers and gasps for air. He tries to find the words to express his feelings, but he can’t.

“Should we talk?” he asks breathlessly. He feels like he slightly undercuts the question by reaching for the zipper of her dress and dropping his mouth to her neck to suck a bruising kiss into it.

She lets out a breathy moan right in his ear and grips his arms, like she needs to hold onto him to stay upright. She sounds almost dizzy as she pants, “In the morning. Did you know it’s been five months since you’ve been directly responsible for making me come?”

He nuzzles his nose against hers, his whole body tingling from the contact, making it feel way more sexual than it should. “Directly as opposed to indirectly?” She just raises an eyebrow. As her meaning sinks in, he groans loudly, grips her hips, and bucks against her. “Shit, Jules.”

“Indirectly—every single night for the last five months.” This girl may actually be trying to murder him. He is being murdered, he will not survive, and he will absolutely allow. She smirks and gets up on her tiptoes, whispering in his ear. “So could we please talk in the morning, and right now just be fucking?”

Instead of answering, he captures her mouth in a sloppy, eager kiss and backs her up until they stumble onto her bed. He pulls away for a moment to take in the image of her on the bed, her dress loose, her hair spread out, the sheer joy on her face. It’s so perfect that it hurts his heart.

“What?” she asks softly.

He doesn’t know how gushy he’s allowed to be tonight, so what he says is, “It’s been, like, over a year since I’ve had sex in a bed. Kinda worried I’ve forgotten how it works.”

Laughing, she sits up to kiss his nose, temporarily pure sweetness instead of lust. And as much as he’s dying to lose himself inside her tonight, that moment probably makes him the happiest.

Then she grabs a fistful of his tee and pulls him down on top of her. “Me too. We’ll figure it out together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, whoops. Guess we _do_ live in the AU where they sing “Get Off.” I am unrepentant.
> 
> Songs/musical references in this chapter:  
> • Jukebox the Ghost (honestly, all my JatP fics feel like they turn into ads for JtG, but of the ones I haven’t mentioned yet in _100 Days_ , I like “Fred Astaire,” “Hold It In,” “Good Day,” “The Great Unknown”… I’ll stop now, but seriously, let’s please flood Jukebox fics with JtG references)  
> • "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" by Paul Simon  
> • SoloDuo: My favorite piece by them isn’t on Spotify, so here’s [Prelude and Fugue X in B flat major](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_jDzCMQtSI)  
> • "Get Off" by the Dandy Warhols  
> 


	8. I Don't Want To Wonder If This Is A Blunder

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from "Love You Madly" by Cake (which I will get them to sing at some point in some fic, damn it)
> 
> Fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1fQCo2E0xEAeYDO9pk8jYu?si=ZJd75ocxT-GSagauI2tmVg)

The night becomes a haze of sex and confessions. Luke’s not sure whether this night is the start of something, or whether it’s an aberration in their time apart, but he refuses to do something wasteful like fall asleep and risk popping the bubble they’ve stumbled into. Time becomes meaningless, and everything is a blur of happiness and pleasure. But there is one moment that stands out.

He’s in the process of trailing his mouth down Julie’s stomach while he recharges when a question occurs to him.

“What did you misinterpret? You said you misinterpreted some things.”

She groans and covers her face with her hands. “No, I can’t say it. It’s too embarrassing.”

“Come on, tell me. I’ll make it worth your while.” He kisses her right hip, gently at first, but then he sucks the bone sharply, drawing a high-pitched gasp from her that shoots straight through him. Grinning wickedly, he pulls back. She rumples his hair, trying to look unaffected.

“You were already going to do that.”

“Yeah, I could stay down here for hours.” He lets himself kiss her left hip, this time open-mouthed and sloppy and wet. He draws small, firm circles around her hipbone with the tip of his tongue—the exact movement he knows she wants him to make elsewhere. She moans and reaches for his head to keep him in place, but he ducks out of the way, forcing himself to pull away from her. “Tell me,” he insists.

But she’s not giving in so easily. “You seemed to like that I get myself off thinking about you all the time. Wouldn’t you rather hear more about that?” She walks teasing fingers down her stomach and he hesitates for a moment because… yeah, he really would like to hear about that, preferably with lots of re-enactments and audio commentaries. But it probably shouldn’t be the focus right now. They should have at least one honest conversation tonight.

He traps her hand against her stomach, stopping her before she can totally derail his mind. “Jules.”

Sighing loudly, she focuses on the ceiling, seemingly unable to meet his gaze. “Have you ever had a thing that you believed deeply with every part of yourself, and it felt so real and true, and it wasn’t until you tried to explain it to someone else that you realized that it was basically entirely bullshit?”

“Do you not remember how we met? That’s, like, 85% of everything I think.”

She laughs and runs her fingers affectionately through his hair, setting off tingles across his entire scalp. He gives her what he hopes is a very convincing and nonjudgmental puppy dog face.

“I thought you were too cool for me.”

If someone had forced him to list the possible reasons he thought Julie had kept herself at a distance back in the fall, he feels confident he could have come up with over a hundred, and this would never have occurred to him. “ _What?_ ”

She weaves her fingers together nervously under his hand. He runs his thumb over the back of her hands, forcing her to look at him.

“I feel like you really don’t see yourself clearly,” she explains, almost sounding frustrated. “You’re this hot, self-assured dude in a rock band who knows what you want from life, and… I know for you, being a townie makes you feel inferior, but from where I’m standing, you’re an actual adult who supports himself entirely and is already trying to make his life and his career happen, and I’m just this student who’s spinning her wheels waiting to become a real grown-up. Especially after we had that fight at the shop, I was like, ‘oh fuck, I’m a spoiled wannabe adult who has so much growing to do and we don’t even live on the same planet.’”

It’s like he’s just found out that he misinterpreted a major plot point in a TV show, and he’s trying to quickly replay dozens of episodes in his head to understand what was actually going on. “Wait, are you saying you have an inferiority complex _because_ you go to one of the top schools in the country?”

“I guess?” She laughs at herself and he can’t help laughing with her. “Seriously, you’re confident, and cute, and talented, and it made no sense why you would be paying any attention to me.” He links his fingers with hers, squeezing them reassuringly. “And then I kept seeing you winking at all these people and I realized, ‘oh. That’s why. He’s like the cool guy in high school who I have a crush on from afar, and if he pays any attention to me, he’s only interested in one thing and I’m just one person in a parade of people he’s sleeping with.’ And it wasn’t until I was trying to explain you to my therapist a couple months ago that she pointed out that I made a lot of assumptions there.”

… is this how Alex feels whenever Luke says anything?

Just completely mind-boggled by how wildly he’s misinterpreted literally everything that’s going on?

_I’m so sorry, Alex._

He tries to put the pieces together. “… so if I hadn’t ‘seemed cool’ and winked at some people, we could have been together in the fall?”

She pulls his hand to her mouth to kiss it. “Dr. Turner pointed out that… how did she put it? I ‘probably constructed a defensive wall out of flimsy material’ because I knew I wasn’t ready for anything yet.”

“And that wall was ‘Luke’s a fuckboy, he doesn’t care about me, and I’m not good enough for him?’” She nods. “And that Luke’s cool.”

“I feel like you’re focusing on the wrong part.”

He sits up, grinning. “I’ve never been mistaken for someone cool before. This is a big deal for me.”

“I know better _now_.”

Her voice is exasperated, but her expression is still small and vulnerable. He cups her face, stroking her cheeks gently. “You get that you were off-base about all the other stuff too?”

She bites her lip and hesitates, and the fact that it’s not an immediate “yes” kills him.

“Jules, you are astounding and brilliant and talented and hard-working and kind and gorgeous. And ever since that first garage party, you’ve been it for me. As soon as you took that mic out of my hand, I was so gone on you and I don’t think I’m ever coming back.”

She crashes her mouth against his. The kiss is sloppy, and rushed, and fucking perfect, and he has no idea how he went months without this. She pulls back and gently bumps his nose with hers. “The flannel, for me.”

“What?” He tries to catch his breath.

“I was going to have great casual sex with a hot guy, and then you put down your jacket for me to kneel on and I realized you were going to fuck up my entire life. And I was right. You have really, truly fucked up my entire life in the best way possible.”

He cradles her face in his hands, trying to ride a surge of happiness that feels so powerful that it may actually be fatal. He’s aware of the words they haven’t spoken to one another, words he suspects they won’t speak unless they know they can say them every day. But he knows, and she knows, and he lets himself rest their heads together and just bask in the certainty of it for a moment.

She leans in to kiss him again, but he kisses her nose, smirks, and pulls away. “I’ve got better things to do with my mouth.” He starts to journey down her body with his mouth, sucking her skin like he’s determined to leave a trail of hickeys in his wake.

Recognizing the callback, she groans. “I only said that because I was trying to avoid kissing you and getting attached.”

“And here’s me, already attached and planning to eat you out _and_ kiss you. One of us comes up with an idea, the other improves it.”

He’s almost reached his destination when, as she’s hooking her legs over his shoulders, he realizes something else. “You’ve never said my name while we’re hooking up. Is that a thing you don’t do, or was that another distancing thing?”

“Distancing thing,” she admits. “Do you want me to say your name?”

He smirks at her and places a brief kiss right where she wants it. “You know what my answer’s going to be.”

She laughs and throws her head back onto her pillow. “Don’t say it, it’s so overdone—”

“I don’t want you to say my name. I want you to scream it.”

She cards her fingers firmly through his hair, the eagerness of her grip undercutting her teasing smile. “Well, if you insist.”

He does.

And she does.

* * *

Hours later, the late morning sun is streaming through the window and she collapses face first onto the mattress, panting. He flops down next to her, catching his breath for a moment, before he reaches out and rolls her over to him. She drapes her leg over his hips and curls her head into his chest.

“I think I may be spent,” she breathes as she runs her fingers lazily over his ribs.

“Really? Cause I could definitely—fuck no, I’m so wiped.” She laughs and he thrills at the feel of her laughter running over his whole body. He starts drawing a treble clef over her hip. “I’m so tired that I’ve come out the other end and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep again.”

There’s a silence and then, at the same time, they say, “Potential lyric?” She grabs a notepad from her nightstand and rests it on his chest, using him as a surface as she writes the sentence down on a fresh page.

She glances over at him, sun catching in her hair and she’s beautiful and his ideal musical match and just so _Julie_ , and the words “I love you” almost come out of his mouth on impulse. He only just manages to swallow them, instead saying, “I don’t think I can go back to how things were.”

“Neither do I.” She links her fingers with his on her hip. “But I also don’t want to leave the band.” Her voice cracks a little, and he realizes that she’s spent this whole time thinking that she’s an add-on, that the band isn’t hers too.

He kisses her, sweetly and urgently. “It’s not Sunset Curve plus Julie Molina. It’s Julie and the Phantoms. The band doesn’t exist if you’re not part of it. I’ll talk to Reggie and Alex.”

She nods, but she continues to worry her lip even as she lays her head back down on his chest.

* * *

It’s well past one pm before he convinces himself to pull away from Julie. (Okay, she has to go to class). Exhausted, but also dizzyingly awake, as if he’s driven by happiness and kept upright by hope, he stumbles into the house. Alex and Reggie are in the living room, and they immediately turn their heads to him, knowing looks on their faces.

Honesty is probably the best policy. “I was with Julie.”

Alex deadpans. “Really? You weren’t at the grocery store for twelve hours in the middle of the night? I am _shocked_.”

Reggie elbows the drummer. “I told you last night she didn’t need to go to Ralphs at 1 am!”

“I never said you were wrong. I said it was obvious and didn’t need to be said.”

Luke begins pacing in the middle of the room. He doesn’t know how to start this conversation. He wishes there were a song for this moment, but he feels like the odds of that song existing are pretty slim. Maybe he should write one and come back later.

Reggie leans forward. “Are you okay, dude? You’re Alexing.”

“I’m in love with her,” Luke blurts out.

He’s expecting Alex to make a sarcastic or knowing comment, but the drummer’s eyes widen. “Oh shit.”

“You didn’t _know_?”

“Luke, I’m not a mind reader! I knew you were into her. I didn’t realize you were _that_ into her.”

“Phrasing,” Reggie says mildly.

“Oh, gross.” Alex refocuses on Luke. “How does she feel?”

She hasn’t said the words, and he’s very aware of that, but he still remembers the feeling from earlier, the utter and complete certainty. “The same.” Alex and Reggie’s eyes widen again. “We…” Fuck it, just say it. “We wanna be together. Would that be cool?”

Baffled, Reggie and Alex glance at each other, then back at him. “Um…” Reggie shrugs. “Why would you need our permission?”

Wait.

What?

“… Alex said if she was gonna be in the band, we shouldn’t be together.”

Alex facepalms loudly. Wrenching his face up through his fingers, he stares at Luke like the guitarist is his own personal migraine trigger. “I said you shouldn’t keep hooking up with her if she was going to be in the band. Because having casual sex with your coworker is usually a terrible idea, especially if you don’t feel casual about your coworker. And I said it as a suggestion, not a rule.” His mouth falls open a bit. “Please don’t tell me that you created some sort of star-crossed lovers narrative in your head and you’ve been staying apart for the sake of the band?”

Um.

“Well…”

“ _For fuck’s sake_.”

It’s a bit like misreading the clock while you’re exercising, and thinking you’ve got a lot longer to go and suddenly realizing that, actually, you’re free and you’ve been free and you suffered needlessly.

It feels way too easy.

“Is it really that ridiculous?” Luke asks desperately. “I mean, if something goes wrong—”

Alex groans. “The point of not dating your bandmate is to avoid everyone being miserable. If you’re miserable not being with her, then staying apart is pointless.”

“And what if it doesn’t work?”

Reggie forces a smile. “You can’t really plan your whole life around avoiding bad hypotheticals, dude.”

Alex catches Luke’s eye. “Are you sure about her?”

The image of her with the notepad on his chest flashes into his mind, and his answer tumbles out without even needing to think about it. “I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life since I found music.”

“Oh shit,” Alex and Reggie gasp.

“We should definitely write a song about that,” Reggie points out.

“Yeah, I mean, say it to Julie first, and then we’ll put it in a song,” Alex clarifies. “And as long as there’s no dry humping on stage, I agree to participate in performing it.”

Every part of Luke’s heart melts. How does he know the best people? How did he get so damn lucky?

Alex focuses back on Luke. “If you’re sure about her, then why are you looking for ways this could fail?”

Luke shrugs helplessly. “Because who gets to just be happy like that?”

It’s Reggie who answers. “You. If you just get out of your own way.”

Alex shoots a finger gun of approval at Reggie.

Luke sighs, and pauses, and for a second, lets himself try wearing a smile on his face.

It feels… possible. It feels good.

Even though he’s terrified of something going wrong, and he feels like there’s gotta be some sort of catch waiting around the corner to jump out at him, none of that has anything to do with Julie. He’s sure about him and Julie like he’s sure about gravity. The thing he doesn’t trust to last is happiness. And that’s… well, the only way to learn that kinda trust is with practice and time.

Getting to his feet, Alex shuffles closer. “Seriously though, I’m really sorry if I misphrased something or wasn’t clear enough, and made you accidentally miserable.”

But all at once, Luke knows. “Nah, I think it was good. I mean, it really sucked and I hated it, but. I think we both needed some time. Do some growing, do some healing. And to be sure.”

The drummer crosses his arms. “Is there going to be less foreplay in our performances now?”

“Probably be lying if I say yes.”

“I was afraid of that.”

But he gives Luke a smile anyways, and wraps him in a hug. “Dude, I’m so happy for you.” The telltale thump of Reggie throwing himself onto both of them makes Luke laugh. Surrounded by the hugs of his friends, on the edge of something that feels like it’s gonna be great, he almost wants to cry from happiness.

Reggie breaks away first and thumps him on the back. “What are you doing? Go get her.”

* * *

Luke debates some big romantic gesture, but honestly, he’s spent enough hours of his life not being in a relationship with Julie Molina, and he’s not looking to extend them. So much of their relationship has been gestures and songs, and it’s all gotten in the way of actually saying what they needed to say to each other. Apparently sometimes you have to use your words.

For the past two years, he’s avoided the cluster of Thornton buildings on the USC campus like the plague. The idea of going there has always felt a bit like visiting an ex’s house: a reminder of painful memories, unfulfilled promises, and unexperienced happiness.

Fuck that. He’s on his own path. And that path leads to the girl inside.

He marches into the Raubenheimer building without pause. (From the alarmed looks the students by the door give him, he might actually have been a bit too enthusiastic.) He’s only waiting five minutes before a class starts to file into the atrium and head for the exit. When Julie finally appears, she looks absolutely shattered with exhaustion—he probably looks the same—but there’s a joyful glow under the exhaustion that he knows he’s responsible for, and all of his insides wriggle.

Her eyes meet his and

Fuck. Her whole face radiates with happiness.

For him?

“What are you doing here?” She slides right up to him, smiling cautiously.

No gestures, no songs—just words. “I’m in love with you. You wanna get coffee?”

A smile immediately engulfs her face, and it’s the most perfect thing he’s ever seen. But first, as if she’s checking pre-requisites off a list: “You talked to Alex and Reggie?”

“They gave us their blessing.” She looks dubious. “They mocked me a lot, and they pointed out that if we’re making ourselves miserable staying apart for the band, we might as well just be together.”

“Flynn said a similar thing.”

The idea of Flynn supporting him and Julie had never occurred to him. “I thought Flynn hates me?”

“No, Flynn hates our decision-making.” Julie smiles through a scrunched-up face, like she’s retrospectively embarrassed of both herself and Luke.

“That’s… probably fair. So: coffee?”

Her smile turns playful. “You don’t think we’re a bit past coffee?”

He lowers his voice so he’s not overheard. “Well, obviously I’m gonna eat you out afterwards.”

She laughs. “Where?”

“I’m liking this new bed thing, but I’m cool to do it anywhere.”

“Where for _coffee_?”

“It’s your campus. I figure you know the best places.”

Suddenly nervous, he holds his hand out to her.

A blissful smile floods her face as she takes his hand and he wonders how he ever spent months convinced that she didn’t have feelings for him. She pops up on the balls of her feet and kisses him on the cheek, and it should feel underwhelming because he’s spent cumulative days inside her, and he knows what every inch of her looks and feels like, knows her heart backwards and forwards, knows every sound she makes, both sexual and musical.

But she’s never kissed him on the cheek before.

This is the beginning. And he’s so fucking excited.

“I’m in love with you,” she says simply.

Even though he already knows, hearing it aloud is pretty perfect. Maybe this is why most people communicate with words instead of songs.

She tugs him toward the door. “Okay, I want to show you my favorite parts of campus first. But if we’re getting coffee afterwards, the best coffee at USC is actually off-campus.” He’s on the verge of saying something smug, but she cuts him off with a soft smile. “Most of my favorite things are.”

So he doesn’t make a USC joke.

Just this once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Julie's POV (which features a lot of new "deleted scenes" and many of my favorite moments in the series) is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27609499/chapters/67545733)! I say Julie’s POV, but really that fic is its own journey and the other half of the 100 Bad Days story. So if you liked this half, you should check it out!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and for encouraging me past that first chapter—I would have been happy just writing that first FIDLAR scene, but I’m really glad I finished this fic.
> 
> And if you were interested in the Wizarding World AU and haven’t had a chance to read it yet, here's [Wizard Love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27500788)! (Fun fact—the music video for the song "Wizard Love" was shot at USC because of course.) Even if you're not a Harry Potter fan, it's basically "Coffee Shop AU with zero chill," unapologetic fluff, and probably one of my favorite things I've ever written.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as [pearlcaddy](https://pearlcaddy.tumblr.com)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Hundred Bad Days (Made a Hundred Good Stories): The Car Sessions [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28549011) by [bessyboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessyboo/pseuds/bessyboo), [CactusFlowers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CactusFlowers/pseuds/CactusFlowers)




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